Rodney26, on 2010-December-15, 23:17, said:
I pretty much disagree with everything you say admittedly, but this here is a little much. US federal employees are probably the most well compensated class of workers in the entire world when taken as a group. If they're middle class, there is no upper class. It's like how there is no longer such thing as a small coffee except in reverse.
Their average total compensation (including bennies) is twice as high as your average US private sector worker (120k/60k). Reading this blog, you'd think it was at least the other way around.
Comment 1:
A more meaningful comparison is the number of years of education/training required for a given federal job compared to the benefits packages.
Most federal workers are grossly underpaid compared to what they could be making in the private sector.
The reason that (many) of these jobs are well paid is that you need to invest substantial time and money to be qualified to take them.
Comment 2:
Here are some interesting numbers:
In December 2008, the US government had 2,518,101 full time employees
The total payroll for that month was $15,471,672,417
In 2010, Goldman Sachs had 31,701 employees.
The average compensation for each employee was $622,000K
In 2010, Goldman Sachs employees took home (in aggregate) about 9.5% as much as all 2.5 million federal employees.
If we lump in another couple dozen hedge funds and investment banks, we'll top federal payrolls pretty darn quick...
Please recall that the compensation packages at these large investment backs are heavily tilted toward the top.
If I had to hazard a guess, I say that the compensation package for the top 5% of investment bankers / hedge fund managers was easily greater than all US federal employees.
Another interesting data point:
The average salary (note compensation) salary for the top 50 CEOs was 10.7 million dollars.
These 50
individuals take home a third as much as 2.5 million federal employees.
Care to take back any of your assertions?