Is It Really so Bad Being a Government Worker?
Contrary to the data, we still constantly hear that government workers are underpaid and overworked. Really? If that were the case wouldn’t the turnover in the government workforce be really, really high? According to Dan Mitchell from the CATO Institute, private sector workers are three times more likely than government workers to quit their jobs. For more information, see Dan’s video below:
NancyEH
Posted on Feb 27, 2011
As usual, MHPC makes leaps of conclusion. Just because - if it's true - that there's not as much turnover in public employees as in private does not automatically mean the pay and benefits are great for the former. There may well be other, more intrinsic, reasons for public employees to stay in their jobs - like, gee, maybe they're important ones that need to be done (teachers, snowplow drivers, social service case workers, attorneys, cops, etc). Too, I don't recall ever having read that government employees said the work itself was bad, but the way they are attacked - - as leeches on the taxpayers' veins - is certainly appalling.
Amy
Posted on Feb 27, 2011
This article begins: "Contrary to the data, we still constantly hear that government workers are underpaid. . ." However, the studies comparing people in discrete education levels across the public and private sector shows that public sector workers are paid less than those in the private sector. A chart showing these results can be seen at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/are_wisconsins_state_and_local.html It is essential to break down public vs private by education level since the composition of the workforces vary in education levels. Actually, the methodology was more sophisticated than what I described above. As noted at the link, "the Economic Policy Institute [compared] total compensation -- that is to say, wages and health-care benefits and pensions -- among public and private workers in Wisconsin. To get an apples-to-apples comparison, the study's author controlled for experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship and disability, and then sorted the results by education." One area I know well is higher education. There are numerous compensation studies of faculty and there is no doubt that UMaine professors earn about $25K less than faculty members at Colby, Bates and Bowdoin. The University of Maine System's most recent study found that UMaine compensation is at the 20th percentile when compared to similar institutions across the country. It is often an issue in recruiting and retaining faculty and administrators. We know that the salaries for top administrators for state agencies are low, as Governor LePage has noted that these low salaries have made it impossible for him to get his top choices in a number of cases. A Maine study like the one conducted on the Wisconsin workforce would be helpful. But it is one that requires using multivariate methods, as less complex ones like comparing people's compensation in one agency to "the private sector" does not deal with variables like differences in education and experience.
Gerald Weinand
Posted on Feb 27, 2011
Also important to remember that the CATO Institute was founded by Charles Koch. It would be of interest to see if MHPC received any donations from the Koch brothers or any of their myriad of foundations/institutes.
Amy
Posted on Feb 27, 2011
Simply comparing the public and private sector on turnover is also a methodological error, although not as severe as comparing a single government agency to the private sector. The problem with this comparison is that assumes that the workforces have the same characteristics. However, the private sector includes individuals like 16-21 year olds working in service jobs which they have no intent on continuing to work in. Rather, they will leave those and enter military service or go into positions after getting a college, community college, or vocational education. In addition, the educational levels and status of citizenship vary between the public and private sectors; these variables are correlated with job stability. The only way to determine if the purported finding is correct is to use multivariate methods, which hold constant variables like age, education, experience, and citizenship status.