Friday, March 5, 2010

If You Work In The Private Sector, It Sucks To Be You

At least compared to government workers, that is.  USA Today:

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

A 12% raise simply for changing employers and doing the exact same job sounds pretty good to me...how about you?  But that's only scratching the surface (emphasis mine):

These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

So, let's see.  When you roll the entire compensation package into one big happy number, we get these average salaries:

Government workers: $108,476
Private sector workers: $69,928

And this is happening at the same time as our federal government is redefining reckless fiscal irresponsibility??

Add to that the fact that of the mere handful of jobs created in the past year, the vast majority of them were government jobs, and we have a true crisis of the private sector on our hands because of the unprecedented expansion of government influence and reach.  Given that government does everything badly, expensively, and to the utmost inefficiency -- not to mention based on shifting political winds rather than any rational reason -- this is a problem of mammoth proportions.

Our government MUST be brought under control.  It starts this November, by throwing out all of the bums who accelerated the train off the tracks.

There's my two cents.

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