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Furloughed
Federal Employees are Still Paid More Than You
by Ryan McMaken
Whether it's CNBC, or The New York Times, or NPR,
the mainstream media is clearly committed to using the current partial
government shutdown to portray federal workers as beleaguered victims of the
American political system.
But, in all cases I've encountered, these reports neglect to
mention that on average, civilian federal workers make 17 percent more than
similar workers in the private sector, according to a 2017-2018
report by the Congressional Budget Office. That's total compensation, so we're
including both wages and benefits.
Considering that a year is 52 weeks long, an average federal
worker would need to be completely without any income for nearly 9 weeks in
order to just be reduced to equal standing with a similar private-sector
worker. (17 percent of 52 weeks is 8.84 weeks.)
As of this writing, the current shutdown has only lasted three
weeks, which means all those furloughed workers profiled in national news
stories are likely still coming out ahead of their private-sector colleagues.
Moreover, given that both Trump and Congress have committed to pay furloughed
workers back pay, it's a safe bet that federal workers will continue to enjoy a
healthy advantage over private-sector workers when it comes to compensation.
Health benefits for most federal workers will also continue
without interruption through the shutdown, as noted by NPR.
The
Federal-Pay Advantage Is Larger for Lower-Income Employees
The disparity between private-sector work and federal jobs is
largest at the lower end of the education scale.
According to the CBO's report:
Federal civilian
workers with no more than a high school education earned 34 percent more, on
average, than similar workers in the private sector.
That's just wages. They get far more in terms of benefits like
healthcare and vacation time:
Average benefits
were 93 percent higher for federal employees with no more than a high school
education than for their private-sector counterparts.
The benefits for workers with a bachelor's degree are 52 percent
higher for federal workers than for their private-sector counterparts. Wages
for federal workers in this group, however, are only five percent higher.
Only when we look at federal workers with PhDs and other
advanced degrees, do we find some federal workers who actually make less than
similar workers in the private sector. Wages among highly-educated federal
employees were 24 percent less than in the private sector, according to the
report. Benefits remained "about the same."
So, most federal employees — especially the ones with less
education — have a long way to go before facing the economic realities that
private-sector employees — i.e., the net taxpayers — face on a daily basis.
Crowding
Out Private Employment
Not content with manufacturing sympathy for federal workers,
however, news organizations have also pointed to a decline in spending by
federal employees as damaging to the economy.
A typical passage is one like this one from a CNBC
article:
If the government
shutdown lasts another two weeks, the total cost to the U.S. economy would
exceed the price of building the proposed border wall.
Without federal spending, we're told, GDP will suffer:
We estimated that
this shutdown could shave approximately $1.2 billion off real GDP in the
quarter for each week that part of the government is closed.
That might sound like a big number (to some people unfamiliar
with federal finances), but it's helpful to keep in mind that federal workers
make up only 1.5 percent of the U.S. workforce. And not all of those are
furloughed.
Moreover, since furloughed workers can eventually expect back
pay, any bust in GDP right now will be followed by a boom in spending once the
back pay is received.
The real cost to the private sector is in the
form of industries that are paralyzed as a result of understaffed federal
regulatory agencies. (As mentioned in this article about craft
beer.)
When the private sector isn't allowed to function without
regular certification and inspection from federal agents, that means shutdowns
prevent the private sector from functioning. This, of course, isn't an argument
for more government spending. It's an argument against a vast federal
regulatory apparatus that can't be counted on to perform the bare minimum of
tasks it has promised to perform.
All of this is just a good reminder that these jobs should never
have been federal jobs in the first place. After all, many of these positions
are already by definition "non-essential," and from the national parks to the airports to the FBI, the federal
workers are doing jobs that could easily be taken over by state and local
authorities, or by the private sector.
Were that the case, no nationwide, system-wide shutdown all of
countless nationwide agencies would be of any noticeable impact. The system
would become less fragile, more flexible, more diverse, and less costly.
Also, many of the workers who now rely on federal paychecks
would already be working in the private sector had the federal government not
crowded these jobs out of the marketplace to begin with.
Every time the federal government inserts itself as a monopolist
regulator or service provider, federal agencies suck resources (in terms of
both capital and human resources) out of the private sector.
That means fewer new hires in the private sector, and it means
lower wages for the employees left in the private sector who must foot the
bills for federal agencies and employees. It also means higher prices for the
private sector as government agencies bid up prices on everything from steel to
petroleum.
Ultimately, all of the problems we're being told about as a
result of the government shutdown are problems caused by a federal government itself,
which has inserted itself into every nearly every corner of daily life
nationwide.
Remind me again who Dems like Pelosi
represent: is it the Hollywood elites, the wealthy upper
class they’re now a part of, the illegal non-citizens or the eroding Middle
Class they’ve been taxing into oblivion and marginalized, and/or the voters who
want their rights and security respected?
Yours for a brighter
season,
Bruce ‘the Poor Man!’
Final Notes…
Contributors and subscribers enable the Poor Man Survivor to post 150+ free essays annually. It is for this reason they are Heroes and Heroines of New Media. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales & ecommerce alone.
Starting with your 2018 tax
year, the laws have changed substantially. Tax
accountant Vinay Navani offers ideas you can share with your tax professional
to potentially reduce your tax liability.
Americans are an unhappy lot, and they're growing less happy by the year. That's according to the World Happiness Report (WHR) which is based on Gallup polling and sponsored by United Nations-linked globalist organizations.
America dropped from the 13th-happiest country in 2016 to the 18th-happiest in 2018. The nation saw happiness levels drop significantly in the WHR from 2005-2007 and again from 2013-2015.
So
why is everyone so unhappy? The authors of the WHR attribute American unhappiness
to income inequality, obesity, the opioid epidemic and a "depression
epidemic." Certainly income inequality, obesity, an opioid epidemic and a
depression epidemic all exist
Welfare Breeds Welfare
Social welfare programs are destructive to the individual and
the family unit because they absolve the parents of their parental
responsibilities and promote dependency on government. There are now
"families" that for two or three generations have been wards of the
state. Many if not most of them are without a male head of household. They
depend upon the state to provide their sustenance, their housing, their
transportation, their healthcare and their entertainment. They know nothing of
individuality or personal responsibility.
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2 comments:
It's a no-brainer that government workers get better benefits, retirement packages and perks [hell, the number of paid days of they get surpasses everyone else] and you can't fire any of them unless they shoot a supervisor -even then they probably can hang onto their job- and I'm blown away by media interviews showing how many employees seem desperate after one fricking week of no paycheck! Don't these people put anything aside for emergencies?
Within a week the media was already portraying this is a huge crisis with federal employees eating spaghetios from cans because they had zero food in their homes...wah, wah. If these people were too dumb too have a few weeks groceries and cash on hand for emergencies despite years of FEMA warnings then I don't feel too sorry for them. They weren't good Boy Scouts and have ignored every basic tenet of financial planning AND as the article says - they're better paid than the average non-government worker.
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