![theatlantic:
Are Most Federal Workers Overpaid? CBO Says Yes
The less educated you are, the better it is to work for the federal government — at least when it comes to your paycheck.
That’s more or less the finding of a new study by the Congressional Budget Office, which compared federal workforce compensation to the private sector using data from 2005 through 2010. The big headline figures, sure to make the rounds in conservative media, are that government employees made 2% more in wages, and 16% more in overall compensation, than their private sector counterparts. But as the graph below shows, there were vast variations between education levels. Read more.
[Image: Congressional Budget Office]
Here’s a telling example of the kind of lazy neoliberal analysis we’ve all come to expect from The Atlantic, one that eschews a goal-post-moving long-view for a typically free(ish)-market-derived short-term one in which the public sector ought to compete with the private sector in a race to the bottom.
The CBO doesn’t say federal workers are overpaid; Jordan Weissman of The Atlantic does. One could just as readily intuit from the study that low-level private-sector workers are underpaid, which, hello, yes.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyoa7iMnKp1qcokc4o1_500.png)
Are Most Federal Workers Overpaid? CBO Says Yes
The less educated you are, the better it is to work for the federal government — at least when it comes to your paycheck.
That’s more or less the finding of a new study by the Congressional Budget Office, which compared federal workforce compensation to the private sector using data from 2005 through 2010. The big headline figures, sure to make the rounds in conservative media, are that government employees made 2% more in wages, and 16% more in overall compensation, than their private sector counterparts. But as the graph below shows, there were vast variations between education levels. Read more.
[Image: Congressional Budget Office]
Here’s a telling example of the kind of lazy neoliberal analysis we’ve all come to expect from The Atlantic, one that eschews a goal-post-moving long-view for a typically free(ish)-market-derived short-term one in which the public sector ought to compete with the private sector in a race to the bottom.
The CBO doesn’t say federal workers are overpaid; Jordan Weissman of The Atlantic does. One could just as readily intuit from the study that low-level private-sector workers are underpaid, which, hello, yes.
