This is crazy...if anything shrinking this is something all of us can agree upon regardless if we are an R, D or I. The company I work for is based in DC, I am always amazed when I drive through town and look at the building after building filed with people.

We can freeze spending for a few years and we would still serve the public the same or better.

The swamp is the vast array of employees that are really there to serve themselves...

This one bothers me the most...

4. In FY2016, a total 406,960 employees made six-figure incomes – that's roughly one in five disclosed federal employees. Furthermore, 29,852 federal employees out-earned each of the 50 state governors receiving more than $190,823.

These stats... they're not good stats. They don't really offer much insight into the issue.

I'm having trouble believing some of the numbers presented. I know an awful lot of federal employees and there's no way their average salary is over 100K. Now if they're talking about total compensation, maybe. But that's probably different than "income."

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

I remember a time where people were fine working for the government for less pay because they had job security. Now they have it all good pay, healthcare, pensions, vacations, security... This can only last so long until we all fall from this burden like Greece did.

Open the Books obtained all these figures from the federal government and the agencies themselves, typically through Freedom of Information Act requests. The data comes from them. The reason I think we see such high numbers is because of the PARS merit bonuses and similar cash awards, which can add a lot to a statutorily limited SES or high-GS civil servant employee's compensation.

I retain a former TSA security expert/administrator to come in periodically and assess our security programs from an outside perspective. Just from what I know of his background the compensation noted by Open the Books is in line with what the agencies and departments are providing employees in terms of compensation.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Lots of my former airline management colleagues went over to TSA over the years. They're easily making double the management-level salaries our airline was paying us. I know this for a fact. I also know they're not working anywhere, ANYWHERE, near as hard as we worked back in the post-9/11 bankruptcy and consolidation days. They're not working anywhere near as hard as my current airline manager friends do these days. And they don't have anywhere near the level of accountability and responsibility (for profit and loss, for example), such as for responsibly running a going concern, that we do.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

In 2016, TSA workers didn't fall under the GS pay scale (not sure if they do now or not). Not sure if they would have been counted in these numbers.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

13 sick days and 20 vacation is what bugs me. Throw in the holidays and they work 10 full weeks a year.

Another interesting thing to note.

Over half of the employees whose compensations were included in the report were in the VA or the Post Office.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

They have pay bands of some other designation, but it's the same thing for all intents and purposes. I used General Schedule ("GS") as the terminology because that's what most people familiar with government pay and compensation know.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I saw that, too.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That's easy to do when you don't have to turn a profit or demonstrate most any other business-related performance metric. All agencies do of course have to manage to budget or stay within that budget appropriation, but there are so many accounts that the money is placed in that it can be tough to sort out when a government organization, including at the agency or department level, is wasting it.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

+1. About the only one that might be meaningful is the one indicating a lot of growth at the high end.

I didn’t see anything about an average of 100k. I saw 1in 5 make 100k or more. The bullets that BK listed look like a classic case of twisting statistics.

For the 78 agencies that do average 100k that means that they are all much smaller. I would guess the largest two are NIH and NASA. If their salaries didn’t average 100k they wouldn’t be able to hire.

If they want to talk about growth in salary or general salary comparisons, they really need to have numbers that compare vs the private sector.

I'm a federal employee. I don't doubt your statistics, but they lack context.

During the Bush administration the federal government started a policy regarding work that was "inherently governmental" and not. We are a software shop. I used to be a programmer and we used to be mostly government employees. But writing code isn't inherently governmental work. Managing software projects is. So, I'm no longer a programmer, I'm a project manager. At one time I worked on a large Navy ERP type of program and had 10 contractor (Booze Allen) programmers working on my project. (Technically none of them worked "for me", their supervisor was a BAH manager.)

So, in 2017 my group has approximately 82 people, 17 of which are government employees. That includes the director, deputy director, Admin staff, contract manager, Information Assurance Manager and project managers. While 20% government might seem high given what I just wrote, keep in mind that many of our projects are hosting types of projects. I currently manage 7 systems. Three of them combined use three programmers from our group. Another system is winding down and will go away this year, but in it's hey day had as many as 10-15 remote programmers (contractor of course).

So, while the admin level staff are fairly low level GS employees, most of the project managers are GS-13's. And before you go off on grade inflation, keep in mind that the most junior of the project managers have at least 10 years of service either directly in this organization or combined federal service. I myself am coming up on 29 years in March 2018.

While statistically the percentage of federal employees may be relatively senior and make more money than average it really isn't a valid measure of salaries that are essentially paid by the federal government. As I mentioned, there are 65 contractor employees who probably all make less money than I do that wouldn't show up in your statistic. Think about the war in Iraq. According to this report in Q2 of 2012 there were 88,200 military personnel in Iraq. There were also 117,227 contractors, 34,765 who were US nationals and 82,462 "Foreign and Host Country National" contractors.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44116.pdf


Basically, the government is top heavy because of these rules. It makes sense. In my world for instance, when programming technology changes you don't need to retrain your staff, you tell the contracting company that you need x bodies with y skill and they deliver them. When work increases you can fairly easily add people to take up the slack and when work decreases you can decrease the staff. Both of which are much harder to do with a government employee.

Another reason that the government has a lot of high grade, fairly highly paid people is because we have spent many years under a hiring freeze. Like I mentioned, there are very few junior level people because we haven't had hiring authority. I started in 1989 as a electrical engineer at the GS-5 level with an annual salary of $20k (would have been GS-7 @ $25k if I had better grades... Too much bike racing. :-) ) As I mentioned though, we haven't been able to hire new people for years until just recently.

As for pay and leave levels. You can find a lot here at the OPM site. Yes, the same people who let my SSN go off to China...

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2017/general-schedule/


The government uses locality pay. For example, a GS-12 step 1 makes a base salary of $62,722, but $79,720 in the DC area due to the high cost of living. $86,663 in the San Francisco bay area.


Here is the pay band for a GS-15, step 1 through 10 in the SF bay area.
15
143244
148019
152794
157569
161900 *
161900 *
161900 *
161900 *
161900 *
161900 *


Note that starting at step 5 you no longer get pay increases because that is the limit for a GS employee. I believe that for retirement purposes your "high three" might be calculated on what your pay would be if not for the limit, but I'm not sure because I'm not a 15 and don't need to worry about that. Note though that the director of my site is a 15 step 10 and gets paid $161,900 to manage about a $50,000,000 enterprise.

While DC may not be the highest locality rate it is fairly high and that is where the majority of federal employees work.

As for leave, here is how it works.
Everybody gets 4 hours of sick leave for every pay check (2 weeks). It stays that way your whole career.
For the firsts 3 years you get 4 hours of vacation very pay check.
After that it goes to 6 hours (19.5 days)
After 15 years it goes to 8 hours for a total of 26 days.

For benefits, I have a nice blue cross PPO medical plan that I pay $6758 per year for ($254 per pay check) for my wife and I. The government kicks in $13102 per year.

I have a 401k plan that the government matches up to 5%. tsp.gov
I have a pension that will pay me 1.1% * my years of service * the average "high 3 salary. 1% if you want your spouse to get a survivor benefit. So, if you make $100k per year and retire after 30 years and want your spouse to continue to receive that pension after you die it will be $30,000

All of those benefits are very similar to what my wife gets as a chemical engineer at an oil refinery. Well, except that she make a shit ton more money than I do after only 20 years on the job.

From your post.

4. In FY2016, a total 406,960 employees made six-figure incomes – that's roughly one in five disclosed federal employees. Furthermore, 29,852 federal employees out-earned each of the 50 state governors receiving more than $190,823.

As I mentioned GS level employees max out at around $161k. Anybody making more than that would be Senior Executive Service, Federal judges, Law enforcement, congress, and a bunch of other types of jobs that I don't know anything about. These people are anything but normal civil servants though.

5. At 78 out of the 122 independent agencies and departments we studied, the average employee compensation exceeded $100,000 in FY2016.

This one says "employee compensation", not "income" or "salary". If this is pay plus benefits it's a BS statistic.

6. With 326 employees at a total cash compensation of $28.8 million, we found a federal agency in San Francisco – Presidio Trust – paid out three of the top four federal bonuses including the largest in the federal government in FY2016. The biggest bonus went to an HR Manager in charge of payroll for $141,525.

Can you please put me in touch with the hiring manager here? :-)

Seriously, for "normal" workers a $1,000 bonus is HUGE.

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Kevin

http://kevinmetcalfe.dreamhosters.com
My Strava

The average for a federal worker with benefits is $12x,xxx.00 per year.

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#WeAreTheForge #BlackGunsMatter

"Look, will you guys at leats accept that you are a bunch of dumb asses and just trust me on this one? Please?" BarryP 7/30/2012

Median household income in the US in 2016 was $59,039. That's not an apples-to-apples comparison to federal salaries because total compensation isn't factored into median household income, as the Open the Books reports seem to include when it comes to federal civil servant income. But it's what we have.

According to a November 2016 USA Today article, average household income in 2014 was $73,298. Married filing jointly was higher, at $117,796. That puts us closer to federal wages, salaries and compensation.

Because of the almost endless ways in which private sector and federal worker pay vary it's extremely difficult to do any sort of true apples-to-apples comparison, which is no doubt frustrating for many.

Washington Post, in April 2017, says that federal pay (salaries, compensation, benefits etc.) comes out ahead of the private sector on average (it cites the Congressional Budget Office).

"Federal employees on average earn slightly more than private sector workers with similar educational backgrounds, with less-educated federal employees well ahead while more highly educated ones lag behind, according to a study issued Tuesday.

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the overall advantage for Uncle Sam’s workers is even greater when including the value of benefits, although it also shows a substantial difference by educational level.

The report concluded that overall, federal employees are paid 3 percent more, ranging from a 34 percent advantage for those with a high school education or less to a 24 percent shortfall for those with a professional degree or doctorate."

This comports with my own experience with managing civil servants back when I was a department head and then director as a military officer. The civil servants with professional degrees and similar saw pay less than what they could garner in the private sector (assuming that jobs were available for all of them in the private sector, that is) while the civil servants with less education earned significantly more than their counterparts in the civilian world.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

In Canada, if we had a report like that, our Prime Minister would appoint a government commission to look into it.

And you can be your ass everyone on the commission and their assistant, and their assistant's assistant, would be pulling in $100k + along with the gold plated benefits and vacation package.

Serious question: do you know anyone who has been laid off from a government position? Everyone I know who wants in on the golden tax payer tit scratches and claws their way in to a 'temporary' or 'casual' position.... Which then becomes full time none permanent, which then becomes permanent full time. I don't think I've ever heard of one of those temporary position ever ending.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

"5. At 78 out of the 122 independent agencies and departments we studied, the average employee compensation exceeded $100,000 in FY2016. "

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Kevin,

Leave facts out of any discussion you have with Tony (BK). His goal is not and has never been to cast light, but to generate heat.

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----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

Nope

Thanks.

I'm less concerned with educating/convincing BK than with getting the rest of the facts out for others who might otherwise read his crap and think that it tells the whole story though.

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Kevin

http://kevinmetcalfe.dreamhosters.com
My Strava

Many, many people were "workforce adjusted" during the Harper years and I know of some others that have happened more recently under the Liberals. There are also many people who come in on temporary positions that end up leaving at the end of the term. What you describe certainly occurs but it's far from a given.

This is true enough, and something I freely own to. Refer to my just-posted "Most expensive mile of subway track on Earth" blurb for proof of that. -)

But as to this OP, all I did was cite figures from the report, and then I went and did a comparison, later in the thread and reported that it comported with what I remember from my days managing professional and non-professional federal civil service works: namely that the professional degree holders seemed to be a little underpaid and that the non-professional civil service workers seemed to be greatly overpaid (in comparison to their private sector counterparts). And when you add up the total compensation, the government is paying (meaning we as taxpayers are paying) quite a lot. Don't we have a right to see that such expenditures are wisely utilized?

I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever that there's an element of duplication and waste in our federal government in terms of the size of its workforce. I would suspect the same could be said for state and local (municipal) governments -- which directly employ about 18 million people -- as well.

"As of 2016, the federal government currently employees just over 2 million full-time employees, excluding the Postal Service.

States with the most federal civilian employees as of December 2016 include California (141,158), Virginia (136,377), Maryland (130,402) and Texas (114,170). The vast majority of all federal employees -- about 79 percent -- work outside the D.C. region.

The U.S. Postal Service, a quasi-governmental agency, employs by far the single largest segment of the civilian federal workforce. Other agencies employing the most civilian employees include the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs."

George Will also had an interesting piece in the February 2017 online edition of National Review (I know that magazine's website is probably a big daily must-visit for you, Ken ;-) entitled "Big Government" is Ever Growing, On the Sly."

In it, he argues that the federal government has managed to expand its workforce via means other than direct employment as a federal civil servant, and that this is done through use of "administrative proxies": state and local government, for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

"Since 1960, the number of state- and local-government employees has tripled to more than 18 million, a growth driven by federal money: Between the early 1960s and early 2010s, the inflation-adjusted value of federal grants for the states increased more than tenfold. For example, the EPA has fewer than 20,000 employees, but 90 percent of EPA programs are completely administered by thousands of state-government employees, largely funded by Washington."

There are also contractor employees in most federal agencies (my wife, who's a federal civil servant when she's not on National Guard extended orders, says she has several contractors working in her organization, and that most other agencies employ them to one extent or another).

The federal government is a leviathan, and I guess it depends on one's outlook as to the scope and intrusion or, more benignly; "presence," of government in our lives as to whether that's necessarily a bad or good thing.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Several things could be in play here, I can tell you how it worked in our Fire dept. You have your salary but then the benefit package on top of that. Yes you get sick/vacation/holiday pay days, those go into the package. And they are on a sliding scale, it took 10 years on the job to get to 4 weeks vacation with 6-8 sick days. We also got 11 paid holidays, but of course we had to work most of them so it was a day off later on. So right there is almost two months pay in the benefit package. Now add in your medical which could be nearly $20k+, and a few bonuses that they pay. Small ones for bilingual, some physical performance bonus, and a uniform allotment(we had to buy certain parts of our uniforms). So that could come to maybe another $4k if you maxed them out. There is also some matching 401k funds, up to 5% some years, lower on others. So if you are making around $6k a month($72k a year) and you add in all the benefit package, you are well over $100k, especially if you have a family and your medical is larger.

So really a guy making $72k is the salary, but if you want to inflate it to look bad then add in all the other stuff, while leaving it all out of the private sector's numbers. Makes for good clickbait.

15yrs ago I spent 6 months as a contractor doing IT support for the Corps of Engineers. Altho I've decades in the military, this time with the Corps was my first exposure to Civil Service. It was unbelievable. I've never seen such complete dysfunction. I've never seen so many people get so little done. I've never seen a "system" so diabolically designed to ensure it got the least out of folks.

Sure, there's hard charging civil service types. But they are hard chargers DESPITE the system that they work in. A system that makes it almost impossible to fire someone, a system that perceives very little value in efficiency and thrift, a system that isn't much for rewarding strong performers.

Human nature hasn't changed much in 100k years. I cannot for the life of me understand how we came up with, and continue to live with, a civil service system that ensures we get the least out of folks. Once a person figures out that rewards for terrific efforts are rare, and they can be a slug pretty much w/o consequence, 99.9% of folks will turn into slugs. The kind of work environment that gets the most out of folks, where slugs are shown the door and strong performers are rewarded, isn't rocket science.

The Corps of Engineers building that I was at had an civil service IT section of ~30 folks to run the network. Not user support, but run the network. But all they really did was shuffle paper and go to meetings. In reality, the 5 state network of prob 5000 folks was run by 2 overworked contractors. One of the 30 civil service types was such a problem that they long since removed his Domain Admin rights and just left him alone to surf the web all day. Getting rid of him would have been so difficult that it wasn't worth the effort.

When I needed to get from one end of the large building to the other, it took forever to get there because I'd get trapped behind wide slow moving employees that shuffled around at a snail's pace down hallways. Almost everyone you talked to radiated apathy.

I had just gotten out of the Army. In that time frame I was knocking around ideas re. getting into some kind of Federal law enforcement or something similarly interesting. But the bureacracy and inefficiency of the Army had been bad enough. That experience with true Federal Civil Service at the Corps of Engineers made it really clear to me that I needed to stay clear of civil service. At work I want to be surrounded by smart hard-chargers that hustle all day long. I need to be in a system that allows me to get rid of slugs, gives me 100% control of hiring, and allows me to reward fabulous work. If I worked in an environment like what I saw at the Corps, I'd throw myself off of the building.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

How about state universities? Does it bother you that

a) University presidents, who are state employees, at the biggest colleges often make more than the governor and even the president of our country?
b) Football coaches at said schools, who are also state employees, have salaries that dwarf the presidents at their schools?

Pay rates in local and state governments are WAY higher than federal. The superintendent of many large city school districts can make well over $300k. I know someone who is a MD and works for the state. His salary is at least double what he'd make as a fed.

Hiring at NASA (at least back in the 90s)

1) Come in with a BS fresh out of college, you come in as a GS-7
2) Come in with a MS or PhD fresh out of college, you come in as GS-9
3) Come in with any degree with experience elsewhere, salary will be comparable to what you made in industry (though likely no more than GS-14)

For 1) and 2) you typically make your GS level jumps (7-9-11-12-13) on a schedule. Figure a couple of years to make 2 jumps. The folks I know are taking just under 10 years from a BS to get to $100k.

If you want to see average pay, head to https://www.federalpay.org/employees/agencies

Well, it bothers me, that's for sure. But I've railed on before about the rise of the administrative staff and bloat at state universities, especially, some of which I believe is due to the easy availability of federal student loans. It turned many universities in to rent seekers, chasing after people who may or may not have even been ideally suited for college experiences.

And now, there is something like 1.2 trillion dollars worth of student loans outstanding, I think. Some of these people are never going to be able to pay back the amount they owe even in a thousand years.

Our fiscal problems are mainly due to an abundance of wealth, not poverty. Or, at least an abundance of printing presses. LOL!

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

There are also step increases within each pay grade as well. I've seen people go from a GS - 7
2 a GS-11 as part of a training program for contracting officers representatives and other supply and logistics related positions.

All I know is, all of the civil servants that worked for me when I was a medical supply department head at a mid-sized Naval Hospital we're quite well compensated due to longevity and step increases. Plus, there were bonuses and other cash awards as a result of their periodic employee evaluations. And I had to spend that money, or I would have incurred the wrath of various civilian personnel offices and commands, most especially what was called the Consolidated Civilian Personnel Office (CCPO) back in the day.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I don’t have any issues with the pay levels for government employees as I think they are somewhat generous for low wage earners and somewhat low for high wage earners.

The issue I see is the retirement plans. I think the military is the worst offender here, but state and federal government workers all seem to be able to “retire” after about 20 years and get paid some high percentage of their salary. Most then get a new job and effectively make double income.

Every private employer who can has moved away from similar retirement plans to 401k type plans. They have also moved away from sick and vacation time to PTO. Government compensation seems stuck in the last century.

Regarding "normal" federal workers (can't speak to military, air traffic, law enforcement, ...) there are 2 types:

a) CSRS - there are a few of those left in the world, but new hires in the mid 80s were moved to the new system. Under the old system, you can get a handsome pension of I believe around 70% of your salary, but you do not get social security (but don't pay in either). In the 80s or 90s, you also got to start contributing to a 401k type system.
b) FERS - you get a pension, but it's much reduced. 1% for every year of employment, and if you retire at 62 or older you get a 10% bonus on that. You pay SS so have that as well, and you also have a 401k-like system (with a 5% match).

In the new system, no way you can retire in 20 years and get "some high percentage" of your salary. You'd get 20% of your 3 highest years. That's barely above eating cat food. Plus, if you have a spouse, unless you get written consent, spousal annuity will drop your pension by 10% (survivor benefit is half pension).

Is the FERS retirement better than many out there? Sure, but it's not the gravy train you imagine it to be. I know folks at Boeing making more, getting stock option, and getting a Boeing pension. Plus, for new hires, they are paying a much higher percentage of their paycheck to their pension (something like 4-5%).

That does sound like a reasonable but strong retirement plan. And you are correct that private industry gets bonuses and such that you don’t see in government jobs.

We did recently hire in a GS-15 that got a strong bonus of some sort for retiring early. Similar to a private company giving lucrative packages for early retirement to avoid RIFs.

Boeing isn’t the best example of a reasonable modern retirement program though. As an old blood government contractor, they are almost as stuck in the past as their customer.

I think that beginning this January, the military is going to a new retirement system for future retirees (current service members with 12 years or less will be able to move over to the new system, if they wan)t:

"Beginning in January, the military is switching from just a traditional pension system, in which retirees receive a monthly check for life based on their pay and years of service, to one that also includes investment accounts, like those commonly available to civilian workers. The new “blended” system is based, in part, on recommendations by the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission.

The system needed updating, the commission said, because the military’s current pension system leaves a vast majority of service members with no retirement savings when they leave the military. Currently, service members must serve at least 20 years to get a pension — hence its “20 or nothing” nickname. More than 80 percent of service members leave the military short of that minimum, according to the Defense Department.

The new system still offers a monthly pension, but one calculated with a formula that reduces it by 20 percent, said Michael Meese, a retired Army brigadier general and chief operating officer of the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association, a nonprofit group that provides insurance and other financial services to military members. (The commission’s final report noted that while its benefits recommendations weren’t “budget driven,” they would nevertheless “substantially reduce” government spending.)

But service members will also receive contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan, the federal government’s version of an investment-based 401(k) retirement plan. The military will contribute a minimum of 1 percent of the service member’s pay, even if he or she contributes nothing. The military will also chip in as much as 4 percent more in matching contributions, for a maximum government contribution of 5 percent."


Continue reading the main story

Military retirees like me, Steve Hawley and RangerGress are a slowly dying breed, it seems. ;-)

Like the article says, though, relatively few military members make it to a full 20-year pension. I'm in the pre-September-1980 group which basically benefited from the full-on traditional (at least 50% pay at 20 years) military pension. And I love life on the first of every month (or today, as a matter of fact, given the 1st of January is a holiday ;-).

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

On the bright side, it's not like these employee's can form a Union, and then have the union give political donations almost exclusively to one party. If that was the case, these Unions would basically be paying their bosses to ensure the employee's get paid even more. I would bet if it was legal, these unions would be the largest political donors. And we all know the Koch Brothers and Corporations give the most money. Especially Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Insurance.

Uh, yeah. I guess that's the bright side of things. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I can't speak specifically to the federal government, but I have been a part of 3 different reductions in force (RIFs) at the state level. During the recession, I had the (dis)pleasure of leading a complete reorganization and reclassification of an agency that resulted in nearly 30 positions being eliminated with about 20 of those positions filled at the time. I recently was part of another RIF with an organization that lead to 27 people losing their job over a 6 month period. Some of these people had the option to return, but many were simply let go.

You brought up some other offenders and yes it bothers me...but the most State's and local govt cannot run deficits into forever. As for the FB coaches, the state isn't paying their salary the donors and money raised through TV, etc are paying for it (note, I am not arguing about how much they should make just stating that the FB programs support the entire athletic budget at most schools and they actually turn an ROI for what they are paid)

So you're saying that they should thank Lance after all?

Not surprised by the numbers in this thread. Australia is the same. Government for governments sake

To paraphrase the immortal Oscar Wilde, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the funereal tone of this Washington Post article. ;-)

How the Trump era is changing the federal bureaucracy.

"Nearly a year into his takeover of Washington, President Trump has made a significant down payment on his campaign pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy, a shift long sought by conservatives that could eventually bring the workforce down to levels not seen in decades.

By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with most shedding many hundreds of employees, according to an analysis of federal personnel data by The Washington Post.

* * * * * * *

“Morale has never been lower,” said Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers at more than 30 agencies. “Government is making itself a lot less attractive as an employer.”"

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."