From USA TODAY:
At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
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What would the comparison be for the identical job? It only makes sense that the Federal government would have relatively few minimum-wage employees, since it operates extremely few fast-food or low-price retail outlets.
It would be perfectly logical for the Federal government to have a much higher percentage of professionals among its ranks than among the private sector. With such a mix of jobs, it would make perfect sense that Federal employees earn ‘on averag’ much more than private sector workers earn.
The ONLY way to make a fair comparison between government employees and private-sector workers would be to compare people doing exactly the same job, under exactly the same circumstances.