Public Sector vs. Private Sector Employment

Scott Brown appeared on ABC's This Week and said, "We need to put a freeze on federal hires and federal raises because, as you know, federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts."  Is he right?

The average federal civilian employee makes $119,982 per year, which given there are 1.9 million of them, is about about $227,965,800,000 or just under $228 billion.  The average private sector employee makes $59,909 per year.  From 2000 to 2008, the pay for federal civilian employees increased by 57%!  Private sector employees saw their pay go up only 31% in that time, and many of them are unemployed now.  Not surprisingly, federal workers quit their jobs at a rate which is only one-third that of workers in the private sector.  They enjoy a great deal more job security as seen in the graph below.  The red line is government sector employment, federal, state, and local.  The blue line with the roller coaster variations in employment, is the private sector.

It is almost impossible to fire a federal employee, but the government would work much better if at least 20% of them were fired.  That is just the one's who are not even trying to do their jobs.  If you were to fire the ones who are trying somewhat, but doing their jobs badly, that would eliminate another 30% of federal workers.  Then there are those who are doing what they are assigned to do adequately well, but what they are doing is so wrongheaded that it is hurting the country.  Fire them and you will have eliminated another 25%.  The remaining 25% might largely be federal employees who are doing things that ought to be done and doing them well enough that it is reasonable to spare them the axe.

There are many agencies so screwed up, they should be shut down.  Among them are the Dept. of Labor, Dept. of Agriculture, Dept. of Health and Human Services, Dept. of Education, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, and NASA.  These agencies are among the many which are both incompetent and wrongheaded.  In so far as they have a few legitimate functions, those might be rolled into other agencies.