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By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press
WASHINGTON Are federal employees overpaid?
Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul
of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending.
Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers
are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts.
A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that
supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality. The debate has
heated up since the GOP budget blueprint unveiled this week calls for federal
pay "to be reformed to be in line with the private sector." It says average
wages "far eclipse" those in the private industry.
At a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., said the
average federal worker earns $101,628 in total compensation including wages
and benefits_ compared with $60,000 for the average private employee. He was
citing data from the federal Office of Personnel Management.
"Our taxpayers can no longer be asked to foot the bill for these federal
employees while watching their own salaries remain flat and their benefits
erode," said Ross, chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee on the federal
work force.
But federal employee advocates claim a straight-up comparison of average total
compensation is misleading. A disproportionate number of federal employees are
professionals, such as managers, lawyers, engineers and scientists. Over the
years, the federal government has steadily outsourced lower-paying jobs to the
private sector so that blue-collar workers cooking meals or working in
mailrooms now make up just 10 percent of federal employees.
That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and
administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered in the private
sector.
The CBO study concluded that the best way to measure the difference is to
compare government jobs with those in the private sector that match the actual
work performed. The CBO found that salaries for 85 percent of federal workers
in professional and administrative jobs lagged their private sector
counterparts by more than 20 percent.
Among lawyers, for example, the average pay in the federal government was about
$127,500 a year in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The
average lawyer in the private sector earned $137,540. And the starting salary
at large law firms in Washington, D.C. where most government lawyers work
is $160,000, and can grow to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, according
to the National Association for Law Placement.
At the lower end of the pay scale, the CBO said 30 percent of federal employees
in technical and clerical fields earned salaries above those doing comparable
work in the private sector. But the differences were mostly within about 10
percent plus or minus of private levels.
The government does offer, on average, more generous benefits to workers than
the private sector. OPM data shows the federal employees earned an average of
$27,317 in pension and health benefits in 2010. That's more than double the
average private sector benefits of $10,589, according to statistics from the
federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The CBO report pointed to what it called a "long-standing concern" with the
federal pay system it allows no variation in pay raises based on occupation.
That means federal workers in professional and administrative jobs may get
smaller pay increases than needed to match the private sector, while technical
and clerical workers get higher raises than needed.
President Barack Obama is seeking a two-year federal pay freeze, but that's not
enough for some Republicans. The GOP budget plan offered this week by House
Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would impose a five-year pay
freeze on federal employees, cut the federal work force by 10 percent and
increase employee contributions to retirement plans.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, said he wants to see Obama's pay freeze include a ban on step
increases automatic adjustments within pay grades that are part of the
federal pay system.
OPM Director John Berry says eliminating step increases would hasten the
departure of valuable federal employees for the private sector.
Asked about the prospect of federal employees losing their jobs in the push to
curb government spending, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio angered Democrats
earlier this year when he said, "So be it."
"I don't want anyone to lose their job, whether they're a federal employee or
not," Boehner said. "But come on, we're broke."