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<p>Not true for the majority of federal workers. According to [Social</a> Security History Frequently Asked Questions](<a href=“http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html]Social”>Social Security History):</p>
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<p>Bromfield: DH pays full Social Security taxes AND mandatory contributions to the retirement plan. The vast majority of federal employees are now in FERS, which mandates these things. Most of the folks under the old CSRS system have now retired. </p>
<p>Will also note that the federal workforce tends to be highly educated specialists (esp. in DC, where there are lots of PhDs in research at NASA, NIH, NIST, etc.), including many folks who turned down more lucrative jobs for public service. There was an analysis of the fed workforce pay a year or so ago and I will try to find it. IIRC, the gist was that employees at the lower GS levels were paid slightly more compared to folks in corporate America, but that higher GS levels were underpaid.</p>
<p>Not everyone in the gov’t is a union employee, either. </p>
<p>DH is a fed employee and his private sector colleagues make multiples of his salary. He also works 70 hour weeks. You don’t work in the gov’t to get rich, that’s for sure, but he finds the work darned rewarding.</p>
<p>My H is also a federal employee and could easily be making MUCH more at the many private contractor jobs he’s been offered over the years. Many jobs have benefits that are 33-50% of the value of their wages. If one is to compare like with like, compensation needs to compare straight salary with straight salary or total compensation (with benefits) with total compensation.</p>
<p>My H has had to do the work of more & more people as they keep trimming jobs and he ends up having to do his job PLUS the jobs of the people who leave and are not replaced. There is no union at his workplace; he has been there for decades. He often works 70-80 hour weeks, including nights, weekends and recently has had 2am trainings that run for 8 hours!</p>
<p>Washington, D.C. has been largely immune from the effects of the recession.</p>
<p>The number of government employees has exploded over the past 20 years.</p>
<p>Thirty years ago, when I worked part time while going to law school, I would walk into the Dept of Transportation, and they would have 5 security guards sitting behind the desk, doing absolutely nothing. All getting government salaries and pensions.</p>
<p>They have become like a ruling class, like the communist party in Russia was.</p>
<p>Mention that they may have to pay for some of their health care coverage, and they squeal, not even realizing that many people have no coverage at all, and that the people with no coverage at all pay taxes that pay for the coverage the federal employee gets.</p>
<p>That is why it seems to me that the Wall Street protestors should be also protesting in Washington, DC. </p>
<p>Until they do, I think that shows what their true motivations are.</p>
<p>^^^yup. DH gets up at 5:45 am, has overseas conference calls starting at 7-8 am, seldom gets home before 10 pm any more and spends at least one day a weekend at the office (and a 9-10 hour day at that). When he’s on international travel, he is on a 24 hour clock, dealing with colleagues and staff on both sides of the int’l date line. He says those trips are generally 18 hour days for him.</p>
<p>I used to work for a major consulting firm and one of the things we did as part of our employee communications services was to calculate one’s total pay. The rule of thumb was that employee benefit expenses (medical, disability, employer’s part of SS, 401(k) match, etc.) equaled about 40% of your base pay.</p>
<p>An analysis of federal vs. civilian pay:
<a href=“http://www.factcheck.org/2010/12/are-federal-workers-overpaid/[/url]”>http://www.factcheck.org/2010/12/are-federal-workers-overpaid/</a></p>
<h1>24 I hope you include Congress in your claims, since their benefits are far superior to any government employee.</h1>
<p>People who know D.C would be more likely to claim that government jobs dried up under certain administrations, and it wouldn’t include all of the last 20 years.</p>
<p>Security guards have become a ruling class? Who knew?</p>
<p>;) :D</p>
<p>H wakes at 5:30am on the days he doesn’t have conference calls & meetings that require him to be at the office sooner. He has had conferences beginning at 2am, as well as many that start at 4am, 5am, and 6am. He often doesn’t get home until 7 or much later and brings home work regularly, which he often does all weekend. </p>
<p>Not having the budget passed until the 11th hour has made his life much more difficult as well as it gums up any semblance if fiscal planning or budgeting. One day they’re told they may need to be furloughed since there is absolutely no money, and the next that they MUST spend the entire amount allocated (can be several hundred thousand dollars or more) within the next 24 hours or it will be lost. It is extremely stressful and many of his coworkers have left in disgust.</p>
<p>The security guards in DH’s building are private contractors paid by the owner of the office building (the gov’t does not own the building).</p>
<p>The DC area has high housing costs; high taxes; terrible commuting; grossly overpaid consultants and lobbyists who corrupt the individuals that YOU send to Congress.</p>
<p>The government in DC is not filled with clerks. It has one of the best educated workforces in the country including, usually, the highest percentage of working women in the US. Most of the jobs are complicated. Salaries for midlevel employees are pretty good and usually earned. Salaries for upper level career or political appointee managers/leaders are not so good. They are not commensurate with the number of people they are responsible for or their budget or the depth and breadth of their programs. No one is earning a $100,00,000 a year or even a million a year or even $500,000 a year. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there is not enough money in the world to pay Federal employees who have to put up with stupid/mean spirited political appointees, ignorant newspaper reporters, and a general public who has no idea how the Federal government operates or what its employees do.</p>
<p>See here for a study of Federal salaries, which have been frozen at the 2010 rate.
<a href=“U.S. Senate: Request not Accepted - Security Risk Detected”>U.S. Senate: Request not Accepted - Security Risk Detected;
<p>See OPM’s 2011 wage scales: [2011</a> Salary Tables and Related Information](<a href=“http://www.opm.gov/oca/11tables/index.asp]2011”>Salaries & Wages)</p>
<p>You’ll note that salaries are in part based on locality to reflect cost of living in various parts of the country.</p>
<p>At least, they have a great and equitable education system in the city. </p>
<p>/snarky</p>
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<p>This is often true even for many government-owned facilities. There’s been massive privatization of support services like custodial help, security, and food service. Decades ago those security guards were federal employees. Nowadays they’re employed by a contractor like Wackenhut.</p>
<p>One other thing to consider is how many of these “sensitive” and intelligence positions SHOULD be outsourced or contracted vs. being held by government employees. While in the short term, it may LOOK cheaper using contractors because they can be terminated, there are many issues as to their reliability and consistency. Some are known for having a LOT of turnover, which does not make a project run well.</p>
<p>Some government employees are responsible for essential services, like phone & other communication 24/7/365 between the US & other nations across the world. It is a worrying trend to me to contract many of these services out so we will lose the current institutional memory.</p>
<p>My dad was a federal employee, an engineer. My brother, also an engineer, also worked for the federal government. Oh my. Let’s put it this way – neither worked late a day in their careers that I’m aware of. Neither worked weekends. My dad retired at 55 and my brother at 56. They did not get rich but they did not even begin to work as hard as me, my DH and our colleagues in the private sector. I’ve also worked for the federal government, btw. It is honorable work and deserves fair pay, no question. It is an entirely different atmosphere from working at a company with quarterly profit reports, shareholders, regulations and, of course, actual competition. Seriously, no comparison.</p>
<p>I do not think comparable education and job descriptions should be paid more or even equivalently to those in the private sector. I think part of the overall compensation in the government work world is the security and very different expectation of productivity.</p>
<p>HImom, it is really not that amazing to get up at 5:30 in the morning if you are a professional.</p>
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<p>!!</p>
<p>Frozen at the 2010 rate??? How horrifying. Kind of expresses the mind set, though.</p>
<p>^^ That may be your own personal experience, and that’s fine. But my experience–friends who are current and former federal employees, husband who was a federal employee, father who was a federal appointee–is not consistent with yours. You’re citing anecdotal evidence to support the claim that federal employees don’t work as “hard” as their private-sector counterparts when that’s really a subjective judgment. What is “hard”? Does the fact that I’m self-employed mean I don’t work as “hard” as someone who works for an organization or a business? Or does the anxiety I feel over cash flow make up for it?</p>
<p>By the way, we do pay taxes here, just like the rest of you, but unlike the rest of you, about 600,000 of us don’t have voting representation in Congress. Just sayin’.</p>
<p>I have two brothers who have both spent their entire careers as automotive engineers, one for a private sector employer, the other for the Department of Defense. Both rose to pretty high, and roughly comparable, management-level positions—high-stress, long hours, and so on. The brother in the private sector job makes about three times as much in salary and bonuses as the public-sector brother who gets a base salary and no bonus. Benefits are harder to compare; medical is probably pretty comparable, but pensions are very different, with the public sector brother looking at a very secure defined-benefit plan and the private sector brother on a much riskier defined contribution plan, though his base salary and annual contributions to the plan were so much higher that even after the markets tanked he probably came out ahead financially. The public sector brother had many opportunities to go to work for defense contractors, but he stayed in the public sector mainly because he really liked his job and the people he worked with, he got some satisfaction from the public service aspect, and he couldn’t stand the thought of losing out on the federal pension which will allow him to retire comfortably at an early age. Bottom line, though, I think the private sector brother came out far ahead financially for pretty comparable work</p>
<p>The same is certainly true for lawyers I know. Justice Department lawyers almost invariably get a big pay boost if they leave and go the private sector, and even the very top management/political level lawyers take a huge pay cut when they come from the private sector to work at Justice or at other government agencies. Private sector lawyers who become federal judges often take a 5- or even 10-fold pay cut to do so; it’s a wonder so many want the job. The disparity is also great for entry-level jobs. According to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), the average full-time entry-level law firm job in the Washington, DC market in 2010 paid $160,000; the average full-time entry level attorney position with a business paid $71,500; and the average full-time entry-level government attorney job paid $62,467.</p>
<p>DC law firms and lobbying shops pull up the average salary level quite a lot. They make a lot more than government lawyers, who are among the highest-paid government employees. The place is crawling with lawyers, law firms, and lobbyists, the vast majority of them representing private sector clients who either want to sue the government or milk some government program. The big money in Washington is not going to government employees, it’s going to private sector players trying to influence government or get something from government.</p>
<p>DH’s hours in the past week:
Monday – out the door 5:45 am, home 10:30 pm
Tuesday – 6:00 am, home 11:00 pm
Wednesday – 5:45 am, home 9:30 pm
Thursday – 5:45 am, home 10:30 pm
Friday – 5:45 am, home 6:15 pm
Saturday – 11:00 am, home 9:40 pm
Sunday – left at 3 pm for overnight flight overseas
This week: up 6 am, in meetings til 5-6 pm, then on phone with office through midnight.</p>
<p>Just one of those faceless government bureaucrats. :)</p>
<p>The last time he got to hire someone, he had 1600 applications for one position.</p>
<p>Just my opinion–Don’t you think it’s time for people to stop b…ching about the salaries of other people? If you’re not satisfied with your current financial situation, take the energy and effort you spend on being jealous of others and spend it on bettering your own situation.</p>
<p>I live in DC and the wages aren’t up because of the govt directly, it’s more an indirect effect. Many people forget we are the silicon valley I the east coast. Just a mile from my house is google, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. Not to mention every single defense contractor.</p>
<p>It is very expensive here. My 2 bedroom apartment is more than twice what my parents pay for their house. Shrug…</p>