WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to announce a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday in his latest move intended to demonstrate concern over sky-high deficit spending."Hard-working and dedicated": thanks for the laugh.
The president’s proposal will effectively wipe out plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million civilian federal government employees, including those working at the Defense Department, but the freeze would not affect the nation’s uniformed military personnel. The president has frozen the salaries of his own top White House staff members since taking office 22 months ago.
“Clearly this is a difficult decision,” said Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and the government’s chief performance officer. “Federal workers are hard-working and dedicated.” But given the deficit, Mr. Zients added, “we believe this is the first of many difficult steps ahead.”
The following chart from Zero Hedge tells the true story: pay for federal government drones has skyrocketed. USA Today estimates that federal workers make double the pay of their private counterparts.
Instead of a pay freeze, how about mass layoffs? We can start with the TSA.
I agree with the administration's action in freezing pay...I wonder why they didn't do this _before_ the election? It's just not tenable over the long term for gov't employees to earn more than comparable private sector employees.
ReplyDeleteOn the chart...I'm not so sure that it means anything without knowing who these workers are, and why they're getting raises. For example, I think a civilian employees family physician working for the military earns about 175k. That sounds like a lot, but really is less than he/she might earn in a good private practice.
The real issue is that the private sector has performed so woefully in creating stable, secure, and remunerative employment for the last 30 or so years. When government jobs are viewed as the plums, that's a sign of a sick, sick economy. In days past, government was for people who couldn't quite make it in the private sector. Now, government jobs are the best to be had in most American towns.
The graph is staggering when you consider the traditional trade-off for working in the government sector was lower pay but higher job security.
ReplyDeletePer the previous commenter, the relatively high pay and desirability of Federal jobs says a lot more about the weakness of the private sector than anything else.
ReplyDeleteThe real story is complicated and difficult to discern. A lot of Fed workers are grossly overpaid, some aren't: depends what you're talking about.
No small amount of the problem is that so many Federal jobs are treated as gifts to key Democratic consituencies (read: blacks) in the DC area. A staggering percentage of low- and mid-level jobs are sinecures for dumb-as-posts negroes; some whole agencies, in their "non-professional" workforce, are almost nothing but such types (inside the Beltway there's a ton of jokes about this, eg NIH stands for N*ggers in Heaven).
So clearly a lot of the hatred of the Federal workforce is really just code-words for racial views (wholly justified, I believe).
Let's not forget that some Federal workers, especially since 9/11, have dangerous jobs including long deployments to warzones, mainly DoD types but by no means exclusively.
Above all, I note that no one in DC wants to freeze, much less, cut military pay, which has grown astonishingly renumerative in recent years, beyond all logic; I'm all for major bonuses for combat personnel, but why the hell are chair-warmers in CONUS so overpaid?
For the record, I am a Federal worker for the last 10 years or so, and before that I was in the military, and remain in the Reserves. Were I mobilized onto active duty, I would make 1.5 times my current salary in uniform, for doing the exact same job I do as a civilian - and this is typical. I reckon I make as a Federal worker roughly what I would make on the outside, no big difference, but at this point the leave and benefits are more important to me than just the salary - which is pretty common a view among us "lazy" Federales.
Let's lay off the too-broad brush, shall we?
Went back and read the USA Today article. AVERAGE federal pay = 81k. You gotta be kidding me.
ReplyDelete"Went back and read the USA Today article. AVERAGE federal pay = 81k. You gotta be kidding me.'
ReplyDeleteWow, I never had any idea they made that much. I should have looked into it years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe real issue is that the private sector has performed so woefully in creating stable, secure, and remunerative employment for the last 30 or so years.
And why would that be?
Perverse government incentives perhaps (although those incentives are often at the behest of lobbyists on behalf of big companies)?
What is striking about that chart is the vast increase in the numbers of federal employees who make that amount. Bear in mind that each column is "over a certain amount", so the numbers in the right most column subsume those to the left.
ReplyDeleteBut still.......Wow!
This could not solely be accounted for by COLAs. One should also note, that anybody making this much is at least a GS-15, and probably an SES, i.e., middle to upper management.
It's just not tenable over the long term for gov't employees to earn more than comparable private sector employees.
ReplyDeleteThis has been the norm for all of recorded human history.
danielj says:
ReplyDelete"It's just not tenable over the long term for gov't employees to earn more than comparable private sector employees."
This has been the norm for all of recorded human history.
This may be true, but what we have seen is an extraordinary expansion in the size of the government workforce and a significant dumbing down of the same workforce.
At some point, tax revenues will no longer support it.
Heh, NIH was funny.
Excellent point, danielj
ReplyDeleteWhat we are experiencing, generally speaking, is a return to normalcy. See also: Roissy
I work for the Post Office as a Mail Processing Equipment Mechanic. I would make more money at Fed Ex. I have no problem with the wage freeze. We are all going to have to make a consessions to turn this ship around. I am so glad I was born female in America.
ReplyDeleteRather than jumping to layoffs, just keep decreasing pay/benefits until the quit-rate is at private-sector levels. That's when you know you've got the right price.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, tax revenues will no longer support it.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the Federal workers who are breaking the bank. There aren't enough of them. It's the State and local workers, who are legion.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704104104575622980958139348.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
HARBINGER IN HAMTRAMCK: The bankruptcy lesson from a Detroit suburb.
More bad news out of Michigan: Facing a $3 million deficit on its $18 million budget, the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck is seeking permission to file bankruptcy. Other towns may not be far behind.
Hamtramck suffers from high unemployment and falling income, but its budget problems go deeper than the recession. The town began running million-dollar deficits 10 years ago due to union contracts that would make Greeks blush. City workers were entitled to annual wage increases at four times the inflation rate and eight paid weeks of vacation each year. That’s in addition to 15 paid sick days, three paid emergency leave days, three paid personal days and one paid birthday.
In 2000 the state appointed an Emergency Financial Manager who in five years managed to balance the budget by cutting the city work force, privatizing services and selling bonds. He got the unions to renegotiate some benefits by promising retirement service credits and promotions, but that set the city up for future pension woes.
Fast forward and the city again teeters toward bankruptcy. Workers still receive five weeks paid vacation and their health plans have no co-pays or deductibles. City health costs have risen nearly 40% this year and are expected to shoot up another 40% next year. Pension costs have climbed 36% in a year. . . . While many cities blame their deficits on the recession, their insolvency is the natural result of politically dominant public unions. By allowing workers to collectively bargain, states and cities have ceded control of the public purse to workers whose main interest is enlarging government. Hamtramck is a harbinger of bankruptcies to come, and a case study in why politicians from FDR to Fiorello LaGuardia opposed the creation of government employee unions.
From what I understand this "freeze" is just for cost of living, not for step and grade increases.
ReplyDeleteOne local experience of mine is a GS 15 led department of the local NAM population who often don't show up for work, and when they do they just vandalize whatever project is on the table. Each year they get a glowing performance report and the maximum jump in step and grade. We've complained up the line, but it is all so untouchable.
People are acquisitive, and government at all levels can be "captured" by employees and unions. I'm thinking of the many California cities in financial trouble partly from paying their employees so much: some safety officers are getting $300,000 a year there. My friends in local city, county, and state jobs admit privately that they are overstaffed and under worked compared to their counterparts in the private sector.
I've worked in the accounting field for the Army for 30 years. A major cause of increases in pay here during that period was taking jobs that formerly didn't require a college degree and turning them into jobs that do require one. After they were changed to require a college degree, the GS level was raised. For example, I know a GS-11who does work that was done by a GS-6 20 years ago. With the extra education, he might do it slightly better than the GS-6 did but not enough better to make it worth all the extra pay he's receiving.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in grade school half a century ago the teacher wrote on the cave wall (predecessor to the blackboard) a history lesson about the Civil Service. It seems that in the bad old days government jobs were given out as rewards to political friends. Then, reform! Government workers were to be tested and hired or promoted strictly on merit.
ReplyDeleteBut reforms are never once and for always. Soon human nature comes roaring back, the reforms eroded. Government jobs are now political plums again, the only difference being that ethnic subcultures rather than individuals get the employment-for-life and benefits.
"No need to riot, just show up at your cubicle every morning. Well, most mornings. Work? Who said anything about work? Show up, you know what we're sayin'?"
Trouble is, to bribe large population segments, you have to create a lot of new job shells for them to fill.
The reason the states and locals are going bankrupt and the feds aren't is because the states and locals don't get to print money like the feds do.
ReplyDeleteThis graph is highly misleading, bordering on the dishonest, not quite "hide the decline" dishonest, but pretty bad. Here is a comment I posted on another blog, explaining:
ReplyDeleteI don’t know whether the author of the linked article is dishonest or clueless, but the factoid he cites is highly misleading at best. Most white collar US gvt employees are paid on what is called the GS scale. The highest you can pay the overwhelming majority of federal employees is the top of the GS scale, so really good people (people who have options outside the government) are all paid right at or near the top. The top of the GS scale in Washington, DC was $135K in 2005 and is $155K now. The increase over these years is about 15%, which is roughly inflation over that period for Washington, DC.
The big jump in % over $150K is all from the fact that the GS scale maxed out less than $150K in 2005 and over $150K in 2010. It’s totally mechanical, an incident of drawing the line at $150K.
I don't know about the other columns in the graph, but I assume that they have similar explanations. There is a scale above the GS scale, called the senior executive scale (SES) which presumably has seen a similar movement.
There are problems with the GS scale, of course. It’s too low at the top, leading to problems keeping good people. It’s too high at the bottom, leading to problems with overpaying dead wood. It is also too high overall (which you can see from the low turnover of federal employees). But it has not been increasing particularly quickly.
Nah, the graph's not dishonest. federal gubmint employees now form an overclass, with double the pay and infinitely more job security than their private counterparts. Sometimes the private counterparts don't even exist, e.g. no private employees are paid to strip and grope airline passengers.
ReplyDeleteWho are these people so necessary that we must pay them way over the private sector/ All the apologists give no examples. Are they the various assistant deputy secretaries for labor, Transportation, Indian Affairs, Rubber Bands?
The Federal Government needs to downsize, radically.
Barn door, horse.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing which has increased federal salaries was the introduction of merit pay and retention bonuses. I'm sure that sometimes these things are given to people who effective. Often however, it is simply an avenue for managers to reward thier buddies, for example, offering retention bonuses to people who never planned on leaving federal employment anyway. Then there are the many affirmative action promotions as mentioned by rightsaidalfred. There are many people in the federal government who have no particular talent, and no discernible function, and yet draw a pretty nice salary.
ReplyDeleteOf course it is dishonest (or startlingly clueless). It makes it appear that there has been some large increase in pay when there has been no such thing.
ReplyDeleteThe question of whether federal workers are paid too much or whether they are useful at all is a different question.
"Rather than jumping to layoffs, just keep decreasing pay/benefits until the quit-rate is at private-sector levels. That's when you know you've got the right price."
ReplyDeleteThen all the competent folks will leave and you will be stuck with an entire crew of folks who only work well under constant supervision and because they are both government workers and minorities, they can't be fired.
Bill--
ReplyDeleteThe top of the GS scale in Washington, DC was $135K in 2005 and is $155K now. The increase over these years is about 15%, which is roughly inflation over that period for Washington, DC.
What are you smoking? Inflation in the US over the last five years has been nothing close to 15%. That's an outrageous level of increase.
As well there are simply too damn many federal employees.