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.