Five
myths about federal workers
By
Max Stier
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 12:50 PM
Federal
workers are
But
are federal workers really the problem behind the struggling economy and the
bloated budget? To answer, let's first dispense with some widespread
misunderstandings about our federal workforce.
1.
Federal employees are overpaid compared with private-sector workers.
The
notion that federal workers consistently earn higher salaries than comparable
private-sector workers has become an accepted truth. Conservative think tanks,
including the Cato Institute, make much of data that
does not offer fair comparisons of similar public-sector and private-sector
jobs or account for how experience and education affect pay. A pediatrician
with a small practice in Des Moines and a doctor at the National Institutes of
Health who is leading a team of 50 researchers trying to cure cancer both
provide health care, for example, but we shouldn't expect that they be paid the
same.
Though
some critics question their accuracy, government analyses show that federal
employees make on average 24 percent less than their private-sector
counterparts. The Congressional Research Service reported in 2009 that private
industry pays higher salaries than the government for PhD-level employees in
computer science, information science, mathematics, statistics, biological
sciences, environmental life sciences, chemistry, economics, and civil,
architectural, electrical and computer engineering. In addition, the average
private-sector salary in 2010 for a recent college graduate was $48,661.
Entry-level federal workers start at $34,075, or
$42,209 for candidates with superior academic achievement.
On
the other hand, some federal blue-collar and clerical workers are paid more
than those in the private sector. The ongoing debate about federal pay,
however, does not address the root problem: The government does not have a pay
system flexible enough to recruit the best talent and pay in accordance with
the market.
2. The
federal workforce is bigger than ever.
Not
including the U.S. Postal Service, the federal government employs 2.1 million
people. The workforce is now slightly smaller than it was in 1967, at the
height of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and today there are 100 million more
Americans to serve.
Even
during the Reagan administration, when small government was a political mantra,
there were still between 2.1 and 2.2 million federal workers. In fact, there
was an increase of about 95,000 federal employees between 1981 and 1989.
In
the 1990s, Bill Clinton reduced the workforce by nearly 350,000 to 1.8 million.
Under George W. Bush, the federal workforce grew predominantly because of
post-9/11 homeland security demands and the wars in
3. You
can't fire a federal worker.
In
the 2009 fiscal year, 11,275 federal employees were fired for poor performance
or misconduct. In addition, a survey of federal
managers by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board suggests that besides
those who are formally terminated, there are a sizable number of employees who
voluntarily leave after they are counseled that their performance is
unacceptable.
Still,
the myth persists that incompetent federal workers cannot be fired.
Unfortunately, even federal managers buy into it, often believing that there is
little they can do to deal with a poorly performing subordinate. The primary
causes of this misunderstanding are that managers do not feel supported by top
leadership and do not have clear performance expectations for their employees.
Though the process is complex, there are rules in place across government allowing for the
dismissal of workers not passing muster - and they should be used.
4. Most
federal workers are paper-pushing clerks.
The
vast majority of federal workers hold white-collar professional, administrative
and technical jobs, and aren't just college dropouts archiving triplicates of
your tax return. Approximately 20 percent of federal workers have a master's
degree, professional degree or doctorate, vs. 13 percent in the private sector.
Fifty-one percent of federal employees have at least a college degree, compared
with 35 percent in the private sector.
Remarkably,
more than 50 current or former federal employees have received Nobel Prizes. In
fact, about one in four American
Nobel laureates
have been federal workers. Their contributions have included the eradication of
polio, the mapping of the human genome and the harnessing of atomic energy.
Federal employees protect our food and drug supplies, manage airline traffic,
foil terrorist attacks, care for our wounded veterans, and make sure the
elderly and those with disabilities get their Medicare and Social Security
benefits. This is hardly paper-pushing.
5. Pay
or hiring freezes would help slash the federal budget.
Clearly,
hard choices are needed to restore our nation's fiscal health. But
across-the-board pay and hiring freezes avoid tough strategic decisions. The
real question is not what can we cut, but how can we best save money.
History
has taught us that arbitrary, broad hiring and pay freezes don't return
significant cost savings. When the
How
much will the government save by cutting 10 percent of the federal workforce -
about 200,000 employees - as recommended by the president's deficit commission?
If the work of federal employees is simply contracted to the private sector,
the savings could be minimal or the move could even cost us more. If government
employees are not replaced and their salaries are returned to the Treasury, the
government would save at most $20 billion annually, or roughly 0.5 percent of
total budget outlays.
Bottom
line: We cannot come close to balancing the budget simply by cutting federal
staffers or their salaries.