By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Not among the one percent? Do not own a lucrative family business? You should only encourage your children to pursue a career in government employment.
The Harrisburg Patriot News says the cost for 74,000 state workers will increase to $89,344 next fiscal year from $82,401 in the current year. Average salary increases to $51,939 from $49,554. The differences are in fringe benefits and other employer costs.
Most of the nine percent increase happens in two areas. Workers covered by union contracts are due a two percent pay hike in July and another 2.25 percent in January 2015. In addition, Zogby has budgeted a higher contribution the state makes to pensions to make up years of insufficient payments.
Life at the Federal trough is even better.
The latest statistics available from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) show 2.1 million federal civilian workers had an average wage of $81,704 in 2012. Compare this to $54,995 average for 104 million private sector workers. The difference is growing larger.
BEA data shows when benefits such as health care and pensions are included, the difference in 2012 was even larger — $114,976, or 74 percent more than the private sector average of $65,917.
“The primary advantages of working for the federal government are generous benefits, solid pay and relative job security,” writes Lilly Garcia in the Washington Post.
Both civil service regulations and union contracts provide dual protections for most workers.
Health care benefits include vision and dental, life insurance, flexible spending accounts and long-term care plans. Federal workers enjoy 13 days of sick leave per year, ten paid holidays and 13 to 26 days of paid vacation depending on years of service. A federal worker gets a retirement annuity, Social Security and can participate in a 401(k) type investment option.
Other benefits include flexible work schedules, telecommuting, job sharing and subsidies at top-notch day care facilities, says Garcia, an expert in personnel management.
Even in this era of pay freezes, untold numbers of government workers received additional monies in the form of location pay, overtime, promotions, bonuses and other incentives.
Census statistics for the Washington, D.C. labor market shows how lucrative government employment is. Over half of the residents live below the poverty line. Yet, between 2000 and 2012, total Washington-based household income jumped 23.3 percent. The rest of the country, by contrast, dropped 6.6 percent.
The recent budget deal allows for a federal pay raise of about one percent in January. The legislation also provides back pay for workers furloughed during the recent government shutdown.
President Obama was in on the holiday gift. The legislation requires him to issue an executive order that initiates the pay raise.
This same Congress then went home for the holidays without extending unemployment benefits for out-of-work Americans.
Congress had the option of freezing government worker wages another year and using the funds to help the jobless. Even Democrat federal lawmakers were not willing to meet the demands of their GOP counterparts to include extended unemployment benefits. President Obama did not make it a higher priority either.
Bottom Line: Government workers vote in larger proportion than the rest of the population and, likely do well at making campaign donations. Certainly in higher proportion than the jobless.
Workers do better in countries where one of the political parties exists solely to advance their interests.
Dick Miller’s advice is not news to me. With the assistance of the news media, taxpayers remain ill informed of the burden imposed by the cost of government. Furthermore it should come as no surprise that Washington DC and it’s surrounding counties are among the wealthiest in the world; almost all funded by taxes on middle class taxpayers. But Dick misses one important point. Workers do not do better in countries where one of the political parties exists solely to advance their interests; only some workers do.