The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: CheapskateWife on September 25, 2017, 02:07:50 PM
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Several items of note brought to my attention recently; one, the presidents proposed changes to our retirement system (effective 2018, so no grandfathering current employees):
https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/05/trumps-proposed-retirement-changes-would-have-major-impacts-on-current-feds-and-retirees/
TLDR version: You are going to pay more, and they are planning to get rid of COLA...thanks boss!
And then this little doozy...
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ne7zgw/trumps-quiet-campaign-against-government-workers
and this...
http://www.govexec.com/management/2017/09/white-house-demands-training-every-federal-employee-consequences-leaks/141197/
What I glean from all of this is that despite the fact that many of us served several decades (and under previous Repub administrations), we are members of the "deep state" and are of little to no value to our CIC.
Shall we discuss or just whine? What can be done about the proposed changes to our retirement system or is it just too late? Has this already been discussed ad nauseum (sp) and I just missed it?
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I am of the opinion of it ain't no change until the fat lady sings. As in proposals to weaken the pension system have been around for a while. So far as a 2000 fed I haven't had a change since employment. I'm of the opinion that at some point at a minimum I will have contribute more to the pension. Every year I don't is a bonus. But I'm not going to think of the implications and how it will effect my decision to continue in employment until it is law and not just a proposal.
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Fed DW mentioned this about a month back. In the end, its a fairly small negative impact to us, so no whining here.
Folks that are more heavily reliant on their pension probably feel differently though.
Supposedly, the extra pay-in won't affect many existing LT fed employees, but newer ones are indeed screwed there. I think they've been screwed for a few years now?
Being both a beneficiary and a (tax)payer for these pension benefits, I see both sides of the fence. I think, in general, I'm in agreement with paring back the federal bennies...slowly.
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Do you have any numbers showing how government workers are paid more, have more days off, have better medical benefits while working, have better retirement benefits and have better medical benefits after retirement than non government workers?
I'll present some numbers!
"In 2016 federal civilian workers had an average wage of $88,809, according the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).5 By comparison, the average wage for the nation’s 114 million private-sector workers was $59,458. Figure 1 shows that average federal wages grew rapidly for a decade, then slowed during the partial pay freeze, and then have risen again in recent years."
When benefits such as health care and pensions are included, the federal compensation advantage over private workers is even larger, according to the BEA data. In 2016 total federal compensation averaged $127,259 or 80 PERCENT MORE than the private-sector average of $70,764, as shown in Figure 2.
It so easy to raise taxes on 100 million workers and give it to 2.6 Million Federal workers, but that doesn't make it right.
From: https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/federal-worker-pay
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Do you have any numbers showing how government workers are paid more, have more days off, have better medical benefits while working, have better retirement benefits and have medical benefits after retirement than non government workers?
I'll present some numbers!
"In 2016 federal civilian workers had an average wage of $88,809, according the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).5 By comparison, the average wage for the nation’s 114 million private-sector workers was $59,458. Figure 1 shows that average federal wages grew rapidly for a decade, then slowed during the partial pay freeze, and then have risen again in recent years."
When benefits such as health care and pensions are included, the federal compensation advantage over private workers is even larger, according to the BEA data. In 2016 total federal compensation averaged $127,259 or 80 percent more than the private-sector average of $70,764, as shown in Figure 2.
I'm assuming you presenting this data has a point...
Lets talk about what average means...when we average, we take all data points, and divide them by the number of data points.
When we are looking at private sector workers, what are you including...could it be that all low-skill, minimum wage workers are included? The federal government, in comparison, has little use for such jobs, and thus employs very few individuals in that pay range. That might skew the "average".
Since you didn't provide a link to your data source, I'm having a hard time determining if you are trolling a legitimate conversation, or are simply lashing out at what you perceive to be Federal employees who don't deserve the compensation and benefits they are promised.
Anecdotal to be sure, but I've given up lots of opportunities for tremendous salary gains to hang on to the security and promised benefits my service provides to my family. What I perceive is that Mr. Trump thinks as little of our service as you appear to.
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That data is pretty useless as its painting an incredibly broad brush of statistics and compares two very different things.
Compare Fed jobs to commercial jobs in similar roles and then you might have a meaningful point of comparison.
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I was editing to add the source of data while you were writing.
No troll, I just think most government workers are overpaid compared to the private sector.
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That data is pretty useless as its painting an incredibly broad brush of statistics and compares two very different things.
Compare Fed jobs to commercial jobs in similar roles and then you might have a meaningful point of comparison.
OK I'll split the difference, pay them more but, let's not support them at a high income and pay all there medical until the end of there lives.
I'm easy like that :-)
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I was editing to add the source of data while you were writing.
No troll, I just think most government workers are overpaid compared to the private sector.
At least in software, where I work, that is not even close to my findings. Government contracts are generally at the mid to low end of the range. (Software consulting)
I think if you exclude the mc-workers out of the private side, you would see this graph change drastically.
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That data is pretty useless as its painting an incredibly broad brush of statistics and compares two very different things.
Compare Fed jobs to commercial jobs in similar roles and then you might have a meaningful point of comparison.
OK I'll split the difference, pay them more but, let's not support them at a high income and pay all there medical until the end of there lives.
I'm easy like that :-)
I think perhaps you don't understand...the promise at retirement is access to the FEHB...which is a program that requires the retiree to pay a monthly stipend to receive the insurance. It is not free.
Additionally, the current FERS pension pays out at 1% per year of service multiplied times your base pay. For me, it will be about the same as my rather meager SSI.
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And then this little doozy...
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ne7zgw/trumps-quiet-campaign-against-government-workers
Not sure why this link was included. Seems like you just wanted more "Trump sucks" links and that fit the bill.
I guess we'll just ignore the 0% increases in 2011, 2012, and 2013? Or the 1% in 2014, 2015, and 2016?
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Do you have any numbers showing how government workers are paid more, have more days off, have better medical benefits while working, have better retirement benefits and have better medical benefits after retirement than non government workers?
Non-sequitur.
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The first link in the OP was to a story on Trump's proposed FY 18 budget, which came out back in May. There's been no real progress on passing a budget since, and we're under a continuing resolution until December. Is there any information out there to indicate that Congress is seriously considering incorporating Trump's cuts into the actual FY '18 budget? Or that Republican leadership would be able to get the cuts passed if they are planning to include them?
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Do you have any numbers showing how government workers are paid more, have more days off, have better medical benefits while working, have better retirement benefits and have medical benefits after retirement than non government workers?
I'll present some numbers!
"In 2016 federal civilian workers had an average wage of $88,809, according the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).5 By comparison, the average wage for the nation’s 114 million private-sector workers was $59,458. Figure 1 shows that average federal wages grew rapidly for a decade, then slowed during the partial pay freeze, and then have risen again in recent years."
When benefits such as health care and pensions are included, the federal compensation advantage over private workers is even larger, according to the BEA data. In 2016 total federal compensation averaged $127,259 or 80 percent more than the private-sector average of $70,764, as shown in Figure 2.
I'm assuming you presenting this data has a point...
Lets talk about what average means...when we average, we take all data points, and divide them by the number of data points.
When we are looking at private sector workers, what are you including...could it be that all low-skill, minimum wage workers are included? The federal government, in comparison, has little use for such jobs, and thus employs very few individuals in that pay range. That might skew the "average".
Since you didn't provide a link to your data source, I'm having a hard time determining if you are trolling a legitimate conversation, or are simply lashing out at what you perceive to be Federal employees who don't deserve the compensation and benefits they are promised.
Anecdotal to be sure, but I've given up lots of opportunities for tremendous salary gains to hang on to the security and promised benefits my service provides to my family. What I perceive is that Mr. Trump thinks as little of our service as you appear to.
^ +1. High skilled Feds such as medical researches and physicians, lawyers, and accountants make far less than their civilian counterparts. And there are high skilled Feds (such as the ones working in my former organization) that have jobs that are of great importance to national security. They go into harm's way risking life and limb to serve their country. They earn salaries in the 80-150K range and rightfully so. However, there are great savings that could be had in the federal budget by cutting 10-20 percent of the work force for non-essential jobs such as administrative and logistical positions. I saw the waste in these areas in my own organization. It would sicken me to walk the halls and grounds of my organization's HQ and see the coffee drinking, smoking, and general bullshitting going on by those with too much time on their hands while collecting a federal paycheck. But renigging on the promise of pensions and availability to health care, which I and many others paid into, is unfair and wrong. If these changes are to be made, then grandfather those already under the current system and make it policy for new hires.
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Lol @ comparing public and private sectors in a race to the bottom.
Public used to be low pay and solid benefits IF you stuck around.
Private has cut so much incentive for the workers, public looks great all around, and instead of being upset with private for sucking, people are upset with public for being "too good."
Just ridiculous.
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^ +1. High skilled Feds such as medical researches and physicians, lawyers, and accountants make far less than their civilian counterparts. And there are high skilled Feds (such as the ones working in my former organization) that have jobs that are of great importance to national security. They go into harm's way risking life and limb to serve their country. They earn salaries in the 80-150K range and rightfully so. However, there are great savings that could be had in the federal budget by cutting 10-20 percent of the work force for non-essential jobs such as administrative and logistical positions. I saw the waste in these areas in my own organization. It would sicken me to walk the halls and grounds of my organization's HQ and see the coffee drinking, smoking, and general bullshitting going on by those with too much time on their hands while collecting a federal paycheck. But renigging on the promise of pensions and availability to health care, which I and many others paid into, is unfair and wrong. If these changes are to be made, then grandfather those already under the current system and make it policy for new hires.
I worked for 18 months as a STEM bureaucrat and my observations and those of some of the managers were that 75% of the people could be let go with no loss in productivity. The government tends to attract the bottom end of the labor pool in any job - washouts from the private sector with low people skills and job skills, so they're still overpaid compared to a private-sector skills assessment. My pay, btw, is much higher in the private sector now, but so is my work output and my value. At the government, I had only 3 real days of work a month. The rest of the time was spent going to meetings or fooling around on the computer. Any of my attempts to make anything run more efficiently - such as automating our testing - were attacked with indifference and "lack of funding" though they always seem to have funding to hire more people. The government always wants to hire more people just to have them sit in an office somewhere. The lady in the cubicle next to me ran cat adoptions all day out of her government cubicle. Others spent the day hiding from their real jobs. One guy day-traded all day. Another ran an online gambling ring. So many of the employees weren't even born in this country making me wonder why we couldn't at least find bureaucrats with English skills. Cutting the government workforce or benefits won't harm its efficiency at all - quite the contrary. Fear of losing their jobs will cause actual productivity just like it does in the private sector. The truth is that all of the good people in the government have already left for the private sector which rewards good work while the government does not. Most bureaucrats feel threatened by good workers tipping the apple cart. There is a 'waste/fraud/abuse' hotline to call, but should I have called it on the entire installation?
The behavior of government employees was unbelievably puerile and entitled. They were constantly complaining about threats to job security though there were none since they couldn't be fired. I suspect this is because they all knew they did nothing for a living and couldn't make it a minute in the private sector. They also whined about their benefits which, as posted above, are far higher than the private sector counting their pensions and medical care. I paid almost nothing for the delivery of my first son. My subsequent children cost me about $7k out of pocket.
The OP is an example of this entitlement mentality. Her benefits are far, far higher than she'd get in the private sector already but it's not enough and UHHHHHH, she has to work for another Republican. About 90% of bureaucrats vote Democrat. Wonder why?
Several years after I left, I ran into another guy at my same company who used to work where I did. He left about the same time after about the same amount of time there. He assessment of the situation is identical to mine.
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^ +1. High skilled Feds such as medical researches and physicians, lawyers, and accountants make far less than their civilian counterparts. And there are high skilled Feds (such as the ones working in my former organization) that have jobs that are of great importance to national security. They go into harm's way risking life and limb to serve their country. They earn salaries in the 80-150K range and rightfully so. However, there are great savings that could be had in the federal budget by cutting 10-20 percent of the work force for non-essential jobs such as administrative and logistical positions. I saw the waste in these areas in my own organization. It would sicken me to walk the halls and grounds of my organization's HQ and see the coffee drinking, smoking, and general bullshitting going on by those with too much time on their hands while collecting a federal paycheck. But renigging on the promise of pensions and availability to health care, which I and many others paid into, is unfair and wrong. If these changes are to be made, then grandfather those already under the current system and make it policy for new hires.
I worked for 18 months as a STEM bureaucrat
Thank you for your selfless service...
The OP is an example of this entitlement mentality. Her benefits are far, far higher than she'd get in the private sector already but it's not enough and UHHHHHH, she has to work for another Republican. About 90% of bureaucrats vote Democrat. Wonder why?
Wow, way to take my question out of context...I could frankly care less what the political affiliation of my CIC is (I'm a libertarian leaning independent voter), the real issue is that as an employee, my employer is making it pretty clear that:
1) my work is of little value.
2) that the benefit I was originally offered is being reduced, thus making it less attractive to continue to serve.
Granted, I will give you that my benefits are far higher than I would get in the private sector, but the low pay more than makes up for it.
Back to the original question, has anyone out there spent any time reaching out to their representatives on this matter? What kind of response did you get?
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"The government tends to attract the bottom end of the labor pool in any job - washouts from the private sector with low people skills and job skills, so they're still overpaid compared to a private-sector skills assessment."
That may have been true in the past, but it's no longer the case. I have been at my federal agency since 2001 and while it was an employer of last resort back then, the world has transformed as well as our workforce. We now get hundreds of applications per opening, which allows us to hire superstars. There is a 0% chance that I would have my job if I graduated college in 2005 or 2008 instead of 2001 - I would have been passed over for someone much better.
As far as salaries - the attorneys that leave my agency regularly double their salaries in the private sector and it's not unheard of for the elite performers to earn $500k to $1 mil. Thus, it is incorrect that they are paid too much when they work for the government as the private sector pays them multiples more their first day out of the government.
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I worked for 18 months as a STEM bureaucrat... The government tends to attract the bottom end of the labor pool in any job - washouts from the private sector with low people skills and job skills, so they're still overpaid compared to a private-sector skills assessment.
How insulting.
And so untrue as a broad, ridiculous over-generalization. Your assessment as government workers being the "bottom of the labor pool" and "washouts from the private sector" is demonstrably false in addition to being insulting. I am just one example, having given up a lucrative and successful career in private industry to join government at half my pay. My private sector boss asked what he could do to make me stay, but I was determined to "make a difference" and left to work for the government.
Too bad your impressive 18-month stint at a single job was filled with so many losers (according to you). In my 19-year career as a Fed working with people from many federal government intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies, I encountered so many bright, productive, and talented people. My own Agency recruited only the best and brightest of applicants -- people with the highest GPA's from the most prestigious universities, people with the best credentials from private industry and the military. We accepted less than 0.5% of the qualified applicants who applied -- but sure, those top 0.5% we took from places like Harvard and Yale must have all been washouts and losers. There are losers anywhere you go, and I encountered just as many in my years working in private industry, along with the innumerable government contractors (i.e, private company workers) I came across daily.
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How Generous Are Federal Employee Pensions?
http://www.aei.org/publication/how-generous-are-federal-employee-pensions/
"Federal...for a total retirement income of $57,834. In addition, the federal employee would have whatever income his own TSP contributions generated.
The private sector worker would have a Social Security benefit of around $21,656, plus an annuity payment drawn from his employer’s 401(k) contributions of around $4,175 per year. The total retirement income would be around $25,832, plus whatever he received through his own 401(k) contributions. To make things simple, $25,832/$57,834 = around 45 percent, so the private sector worker clearly is receiving far less.".
http://www.aei.org/publication/how-generous-are-federal-employee-pensions/
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I worked for 18 months as a STEM bureaucrat... The government tends to attract the bottom end of the labor pool in any job - washouts from the private sector with low people skills and job skills, so they're still overpaid compared to a private-sector skills assessment.
How insulting.
And so untrue as a broad, ridiculous over-generalization. Your assessment as government workers being the "bottom of the labor pool" and "washouts from the private sector" is demonstrably false in addition to being insulting. I am just one example, having given up a lucrative and successful career in private industry to join government at half my pay. My private sector boss asked what he could do to make me stay, but I was determined to "make a difference" and left to work for the government.
Too bad your impressive 18-month stint at a single job was filled with so many losers (according to you). In my 19-year career as a Fed working with people from many federal government intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies, I encountered so many bright, productive, and talented people. My own Agency recruited only the best and brightest of applicants -- people with the highest GPA's from the most prestigious universities, people with the best credentials from private industry and the military. We accepted less than 0.5% of the qualified applicants who applied -- but sure, those top 0.5% we took from places like Harvard and Yale must have all been washouts and losers. There are losers anywhere you go, and I encountered just as many in my years working in private industry, along with the innumerable government contractors (i.e, private company workers) I came across daily.
My generalization is completely fair. There are some talented people working for the government. In some departments, most might be talented. However, bureaucrats have the reputation they've earned and they know it. I visited a government customer one time and he - one of the talented ones - remarked out-of-the-blue how government employees "do not have the greatest reputation." Also, the fact that there's talent at the government does not mean it's used efficiently. You brought up 'intelligence' agencies as an example. Many would agree their output has not been the greatest over the past couple of decades. An incident in 2003 comes to mind, amongst many others. Nowadays, better intelligence is available from open sources. The satellites don't show much in urban terrain. Scott Locklin is probably a good resource to learn about the failures of government science.
You took a 50% raw pay cut to work for the government, but the true pay cut was much smaller factoring in the cost of health care and your pension rewards.
You also touched on another problem with government employees: their belief in credentials as qualifications or real-world experience. Having a piece of paper and a good GPA does not mean you're going to make a good engineer. In fact, some of the best ones we have went to State U or started out on the production line. People who are good at takign tests are often helpless in the lab. I'm unimpressed that you have Harvard grads at work. The fact is that most of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton grads (HYP) go into finance. 70% go into finance because that's where the money is. Then there are the Zuckerbergs who *might* go into STEM with some help from the Winklevoss'. Even of those HYP grads you select, you sound like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
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Testy topic.
Again, my Fed DW has commented more times than I can count at the useless co-workers and other government minions she must associate with daily.
Yes, there are useless people everywhere. There tends to be a larger attraction within the government though. There's more than a little similarity to traditional Unions going on.
Unions have never been about efficiency or hard work. The once-upon ideal was great... the reality, not-so-much. Unions tend to protect poor performance and provide zero incentive to be a better performer. Sound like government?
Because government salaries aren't tied to the free market, over-compensation is far more likely than somewhere in the private sector. A private company will (or should) fail if the workforce is significantly overpaid. A government can simply tax more.
At some point the citizens will get too fed up. No pun intended.
Do private sector folks not get their (rare and/or paltry) pensions cut? Or get fired for inadequate performance? Or pay more and more for healthcare every year? Or get retirement matches dropped, or whatever?
Why should a government worker be 'exempt' from any of this?
It would be great if everyone made amazing salaries and were millionaires. But actually that wouldn't be great, it'd be the same. Some will always gain at another's expense.
I think most would believe that the gov't worker hasn't had to carry their fair share of financial burdens when compared to everyone else.
As taxpayers we are also given no choice but to foot the bill for it too. Its a double whammy.
I guess I'm numb to a cry of 'no fair' from gov't workers.
I recognize that its fun to be on the gravy train and that it sucks when someone mentions they want a spoonful of that gravy back. Welcome to reality.
I'm not sure the federal government has an overall 'quality' problem. I think 'quantity' is the much bigger issues to address.
As a last aside, are other federal employees really complaining about their salary?? Hoo boy. Hey, I'm the first to admit...I chose the wrong sector!!!
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This is a difficult topic because there's really no way to make a straight up comparison.
Public sector jobs (Federal, State, County, City), in my experience, are much more highly paid than private (on average).
You can pull up "average" data and say that you aren't comparing apples to apples, that the Fed jobs are harder and require more skill - but is that really true?
I don't know the answer to that because there are literally millions of people all over the country on the Federal rolls, and county and state. I'm quite sure it varies a lot by agency, state, job, etc.
I worked with a lot of Fed employees when I was in the military, and they were top notch. But they were STEM/ high tech. And those friends of mine who stayed in and transitioned are living pretty large right now. Their paycheck is on average a bit higher than the private counterparts. Bennies are much much better. However, I also worked with a lot of administrative staff who were still there because it was really hard to fire people. The only reason we were able to get rid of our secretary was to promote her to be someone else's problem.
Now, I'm a bit of a dinosaur - so to be honest, I don't even know if they HAVE secretaries anymore. Our office of about 20-30 people had 3 to 4. Because we wrote letters. And they got typed up, on actual typewriters (though everyone had a PC within my first year). So I had to have the secretary type my correspondence. I'm guessing that they don't do that anymore.
Same thing goes with our local government. Some of our local folks are top notch. Some of them get their family in (nepotism), some people get arrested for stealing a couple of million dollars. We have sheriffs that retire at 50 with full medical coverage and $150k pensions for the rest of their lives.
So, in some cases, Fed employees are living high on the hog in retirement when they REALLY weren't "underpaid compared to the private sector". (I have a few neighbors who fit that category and DON'T GET IT.)
In some cases, Fed employees (and local govt) really were underpaid, but chose to exchange that for security. And their pensions aren't quite so generous.
Either way, whomever said it's a "race to the bottom" are totally right.
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I worked for 18 months as a STEM bureaucrat... The government tends to attract the bottom end of the labor pool in any job - washouts from the private sector with low people skills and job skills, so they're still overpaid compared to a private-sector skills assessment.
How insulting.
And so untrue as a broad, ridiculous over-generalization. Your assessment as government workers being the "bottom of the labor pool" and "washouts from the private sector" is demonstrably false in addition to being insulting. I am just one example, having given up a lucrative and successful career in private industry to join government at half my pay. My private sector boss asked what he could do to make me stay, but I was determined to "make a difference" and left to work for the government.
Too bad your impressive 18-month stint at a single job was filled with so many losers (according to you). In my 19-year career as a Fed working with people from many federal government intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies, I encountered so many bright, productive, and talented people. My own Agency recruited only the best and brightest of applicants -- people with the highest GPA's from the most prestigious universities, people with the best credentials from private industry and the military. We accepted less than 0.5% of the qualified applicants who applied -- but sure, those top 0.5% we took from places like Harvard and Yale must have all been washouts and losers. There are losers anywhere you go, and I encountered just as many in my years working in private industry, along with the innumerable government contractors (i.e, private company workers) I came across daily.
My generalization is completely fair. There are some talented people working for the government. In some departments, most might be talented. However, bureaucrats have the reputation they've earned and they know it. I visited a government customer one time and he - one of the talented ones - remarked out-of-the-blue how government employees "do not have the greatest reputation." Also, the fact that there's talent at the government does not mean it's used efficiently. You brought up 'intelligence' agencies as an example. Many would agree their output has not been the greatest over the past couple of decades. An incident in 2003 comes to mind, amongst many others. Nowadays, better intelligence is available from open sources. The satellites don't show much in urban terrain. Scott Locklin is probably a good resource to learn about the failures of government science.
You took a 50% raw pay cut to work for the government, but the true pay cut was much smaller factoring in the cost of health care and your pension rewards.
You also touched on another problem with government employees: their belief in credentials as qualifications or real-world experience. Having a piece of paper and a good GPA does not mean you're going to make a good engineer. In fact, some of the best ones we have went to State U or started out on the production line. People who are good at takign tests are often helpless in the lab. I'm unimpressed that you have Harvard grads at work. The fact is that most of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton grads (HYP) go into finance. 70% go into finance because that's where the money is. Then there are the Zuckerbergs who *might* go into STEM with some help from the Winklevoss'. Even of those HYP grads you select, you sound like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Just ridiculous, and still insulting. I have no interest in further debating someone with such a limiting viewpoint, who thinks such generalizations are "completely fair."
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This is a difficult topic because there's really no way to make a straight up comparison.
Public sector jobs (Federal, State, County, City), in my experience, are much more highly paid than private (on average).
You can pull up "average" data and say that you aren't comparing apples to apples, that the Fed jobs are harder and require more skill - but is that really true?
I don't know the answer to that because there are literally millions of people all over the country on the Federal rolls, and county and state. I'm quite sure it varies a lot by agency, state, job, etc.
I worked with a lot of Fed employees when I was in the military, and they were top notch. But they were STEM/ high tech. And those friends of mine who stayed in and transitioned are living pretty large right now. Their paycheck is on average a bit higher than the private counterparts. Bennies are much much better. However, I also worked with a lot of administrative staff who were still there because it was really hard to fire people. The only reason we were able to get rid of our secretary was to promote her to be someone else's problem.
Now, I'm a bit of a dinosaur - so to be honest, I don't even know if they HAVE secretaries anymore. Our office of about 20-30 people had 3 to 4. Because we wrote letters. And they got typed up, on actual typewriters (though everyone had a PC within my first year). So I had to have the secretary type my correspondence. I'm guessing that they don't do that anymore.
Same thing goes with our local government. Some of our local folks are top notch. Some of them get their family in (nepotism), some people get arrested for stealing a couple of million dollars. We have sheriffs that retire at 50 with full medical coverage and $150k pensions for the rest of their lives.
So, in some cases, Fed employees are living high on the hog in retirement when they REALLY weren't "underpaid compared to the private sector". (I have a few neighbors who fit that category and DON'T GET IT.)
In some cases, Fed employees (and local govt) really were underpaid, but chose to exchange that for security. And their pensions aren't quite so generous.
Either way, whomever said it's a "race to the bottom" are totally right.
I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets. These employees actually do generally make more than their private counterparts.
The professional and STEM employees are a small portion of the remaining workforce. Since most pay is capped out, it's generally lower than private sector. Having worked in contracting for a while, I can assure you that the private sector pays significantly better.
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^ +1. High skilled Feds such as medical researches and physicians, lawyers, and accountants make far less than their civilian counterparts. And there are high skilled Feds (such as the ones working in my former organization) that have jobs that are of great importance to national security. They go into harm's way risking life and limb to serve their country. They earn salaries in the 80-150K range and rightfully so. However, there are great savings that could be had in the federal budget by cutting 10-20 percent of the work force for non-essential jobs such as administrative and logistical positions. I saw the waste in these areas in my own organization. It would sicken me to walk the halls and grounds of my organization's HQ and see the coffee drinking, smoking, and general bullshitting going on by those with too much time on their hands while collecting a federal paycheck. But renigging on the promise of pensions and availability to health care, which I and many others paid into, is unfair and wrong. If these changes are to be made, then grandfather those already under the current system and make it policy for new hires.
I worked for 18 months as a STEM bureaucrat and my observations and those of some of the managers were that 75% of the people could be let go with no loss in productivity. The government tends to attract the bottom end of the labor pool in any job - washouts from the private sector with low people skills and job skills, so they're still overpaid compared to a private-sector skills assessment. My pay, btw, is much higher in the private sector now, but so is my work output and my value. At the government, I had only 3 real days of work a month. The rest of the time was spent going to meetings or fooling around on the computer. Any of my attempts to make anything run more efficiently - such as automating our testing - were attacked with indifference and "lack of funding" though they always seem to have funding to hire more people. The government always wants to hire more people just to have them sit in an office somewhere. The lady in the cubicle next to me ran cat adoptions all day out of her government cubicle. Others spent the day hiding from their real jobs. One guy day-traded all day. Another ran an online gambling ring. So many of the employees weren't even born in this country making me wonder why we couldn't at least find bureaucrats with English skills. Cutting the government workforce or benefits won't harm its efficiency at all - quite the contrary. Fear of losing their jobs will cause actual productivity just like it does in the private sector. The truth is that all of the good people in the government have already left for the private sector which rewards good work while the government does not. Most bureaucrats feel threatened by good workers tipping the apple cart. There is a 'waste/fraud/abuse' hotline to call, but should I have called it on the entire installation?
The behavior of government employees was unbelievably puerile and entitled. They were constantly complaining about threats to job security though there were none since they couldn't be fired. I suspect this is because they all knew they did nothing for a living and couldn't make it a minute in the private sector. They also whined about their benefits which, as posted above, are far higher than the private sector counting their pensions and medical care. I paid almost nothing for the delivery of my first son. My subsequent children cost me about $7k out of pocket.
The OP is an example of this entitlement mentality. Her benefits are far, far higher than she'd get in the private sector already but it's not enough and UHHHHHH, she has to work for another Republican. About 90% of bureaucrats vote Democrat. Wonder why?
Several years after I left, I ran into another guy at my same company who used to work where I did. He left about the same time after about the same amount of time there. He assessment of the situation is identical to mine.
The funny thing is, you could make this exact same post but replace "government" with any other large industry and it would still be accurate. I work in a STEM position for a large oil/gas company, and as with most of these companies we reduced our workforce 50% over the last few years during the downturn with basically no loss of productivity. That is to say, about 50% of the people working here had little/no impact on the business. The guy in the office next to mine literally just walked around to other people's offices and chatted with them all day every day, I never saw him do any work at all, and he wasted 8 hours a day of other peoples' time.
At my last job at a large medical manufacturing company I literally ran out of things to do, and despite asking for more just ended up reading shit on the internet until I finally got so bored I left. There were numerous people who'd been at that facility for over 20 years and I'm pretty sure had never actually done anything. They were paying college engineering grads to transfer data from one excel sheet into another and format it, for weeks at a time. My roommate at the time who worked there making >$60,000 a year didn't even usually go in to work until 10 or so and left at 330 on a long day.
Waste is inherent in large organizations where the person writing the checks and the person whose bank account the checks come out of are too far removed from each other. One advantage some (but not all) private sectors have is occasional business downturns that force them to purge some of the waste. Oil/gas has that every decade or two, medical not so much.
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Perhaps persons who feels strongly about this should start their own thread relating to "entitled federal employees." Please allow me to get back to the question:
Have any other feds reached out to their representatives about this and what was the response?
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With all due respect OP, you did not ask that question originally; you asked do we discuss or just whine.
FWIW, I, too have served my employer for decades. I will not get a pension, healthcare, etc. Each year the cost of my insurance goes up and so do my out of pocket costs. Rarely since 2007 have we received a cost of living increase . It is what it is. Whatever you will get post-retirement, take it and say thank you as many of us get nothing, or leave it on the table then you are allowed to continue to whine.
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With all due respect OP, you did not ask that question originally; you asked do we discuss or just whine.
FWIW, I, too have served my employer for decades. I will not get a pension, healthcare, etc. Each year the cost of my insurance goes up and so do my out of pocket costs. Rarely since 2007 have we received a cost of living increase . It is what it is. Whatever you will get post-retirement, take it and say thank you as many of us get nothing, or leave it on the table then you are allowed to continue to whine.
That's an awfully whiney response of your own. Given that people here believe in the free market, if you wanted the generous salary and benefits of a government position, I'm guessing you agree that you could have simply applied for one. Once you were offered such a job, I'm sure the benefits portion of your accepted job offer would be considered part of the mutual contract of your employment, and thus you would feel that you would have the right to receive what you and your employer had agreed upon as part of your compensation package negotiated for in good faith.
Given that you took a different job and agreed upon a compensation package with your own employer, I'm sure you are satisfied that you also received what you were entitled to in return for your labor.
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Unfortunately things such as this end up being best resolved when NO ONE IS HAPPY. The reality of everyone being unhappy is simply a hard-fought compromise. I'm not going to like it, you're not going to like it, they're not going to like it either, but it's the way it's going to be.
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DW is a government lawyer, so I speak from experience. Her compensation is awesome. Not from the dollars, but from the benefits.
1. Awesome health insurance
2. Awesome 401k (TSP) with match
3. Pension
4. Generous time off policy
5. Great work life balance most of the time
6. Decent salary (half way up the GS15 scale)
At this rate, her pension is going to be 30-40k a year in today's dollars, and that's assuming she can't get on the SES scale. On top of her SS. On top of her TSP which will likely have 7 figures in it by the time she retires. If her retirement is 40-50 years that pension is worth millions.
Could she make more as a private lawyer? In dollars, probably, but she would have no work life balance.
With respect to the competence of government employees, both her and I (when I worked for the government) saw the entire range of quality. It's unfair to say government employees are typically bad, but there is a significant portion that give the rest a bad name. And in the government its very hard to get rid of people.
In my field the way the government develops software is just ass-backwards. The way the contracts are written, contractors are incentivized to build in complexity and have crappy developers work on thing, since they get paid by the hour. Things that should take weeks or months end up taking months or years, and cost 10x what they should.
I look at the F35 program, and they say things like some part of the software needs 6 million lines of code. As a software developer that has me scratching my head. How do they know that? How do they know if they haven't implemented the functionality? Every line of code you write is a liability. Having 6 million lines of code is 6 million liabilities. I am not on the inside so I don't know for sure, but it sure seems fishy.
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Generally, I think quality of gov't employees varies wildly by sector. In the research science sectors at least, there are relatively few support staff; very advanced training, skills, education, and credentials required to get the jobs; and high performance required to advance notably in salary (which is capped at the high end anyway). Some of the science oriented positions don't really have comps in the private market. Where you can do direct comps, the high skilled gov't employees tend to be paid less than the private market, with the benefits making up the difference (more or less). At the lower end of the skill scale, workers probably are paid better than the private market.
To the OP's questions. I'm not hugely upset about the past decade's tiny or nonexistent COL increases, given the recession and slow recovery. And I wouldn't mind an increase in employee contribution to pensions, although I would want it phased in over much longer, so that it wouldn't completely eat up the above-mentioned tiny COL increases (e.g., .25% increase per year). Going to high 5 versus high 3 retirement would be annoying, but would not affect pensions as much as changing the COL increase for the pension to chained CPI or similar. That latter would be a blow.
Such changes have been proposed under most GOP controlled congresses since the 1980s, and so far only new hires have been hit with changes. More than 30 years of threats and not much is different... but you never know.
Also, Congressional benefits (and annual raises) are (essentially) the same as civilian Feds, with the exception that they are subject to the ACA and are not covered under the civilian Federal health insurance program. Therefore any changes they make will bite their own benefits. I suspect this is the reason the system isn't tinkered with more often.
We have never bothered lobbying our representatives on this... they are hardcore tea party anti government people. If legislation looks likely to pass, we would lobby. It would be pointless, though.
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To the OP's questions. I'm not hugely upset about the past decade's tiny or nonexistent COL increases, given the recession and slow recovery.
Agreed...they made sense given what was going on in the broader economy.
And I wouldn't mind an increase in employee contribution to pensions, although I would want it phased in over much longer, so that it wouldn't completely eat up the above-mentioned tiny COL increases (e.g., .25% increase per year). Going to high 5 versus high 3 retirement would be annoying, but would not affect pensions as much as changing the COL increase for the pension to chained CPI or similar. That latter would be a blow.
Also agreed...but I'm early enough in my RE plans that I can recover with 1 or 2 OMY's. However, for those who were planning to retire in 2018 or 2019 (or folks who have already been retired for a bit), this has got to be an alarming development (as current strategy shows immediate deletion of COLA).
Such changes have been proposed under most GOP controlled congresses since the 1980s, and so far only new hires have been hit with changes. More than 30 years of threats and not much is different... but you never know.
Also, Congressional benefits (and annual raises) are (essentially) the same as civilian Feds, with the exception that they are subject to the ACA and are not covered under the civilian Federal health insurance program. Therefore any changes they make will bite their own benefits. I suspect this is the reason the system isn't tinkered with more often.
We have never bothered lobbying our representatives on this... they are hardcore tea party anti government people. If legislation looks likely to pass, we would lobby. It would be pointless, though.
Thank you for your response...there are folks here (close to retirement) that are especially alarmed about the idea of the SSI supplement going away, but I'm not getting too excited about that because it always seemed excessive to me; on the other hand, it was a promised benefit. If I were on the cusp of retiring and a large component of my planned retirement got deleted...I'd be pretty alarmed too.
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What's this about killing the G fund?
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I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets.
You have this exactly backwards. Compared to the economy at large, the federal workforce has a proportionately much smaller number of burger flippers and retail workers, and a much bigger proportion of scientists and lawyers. Oh so many lawyers.
There are a lot of janitors for all of those federal facilities, but most of those are private contract workers now, not feds themselves.
Think about the services the federal government provides, compared to the services the rest of the economy provides, and reconsider your assertion about the required education and skill level of the federal workforce. This disparity is the reason why federal pay is higher than average per employee, and yet lower than average per job type. There are a lot of underpaid people in high paying professions working for you. You're welcome.
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I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets.
You have this exactly backwards. Compared to the economy at large, the federal workforce has a proportionately much smaller number of burger flippers and retail workers, and a much bigger proportion of scientists and lawyers. Oh so many lawyers.
There are a lot of janitors for all of those federal facilities, but most of those are private contract workers now, not feds themselves.
Think about the services the federal government provides, compared to the services the rest of the economy provides, and reconsider your assertion about the required education and skill level of the federal workforce. This disparity is the reason why federal pay is higher than average per employee, and yet lower than average per job type. There are a lot of underpaid people in high paying professions working for you. You're welcome.
This for state and local as well. I'm a government attorney with 23 years experience and 15 years in government. I make high 5 figures after 15 years. I know for a fact that many of my counterparts in private practice make way more than I do.
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This for state and local as well. I'm a government attorney with 23 years experience and 15 years in government. I make high 5 figures after 15 years. I know for a fact that many of my counterparts in private practice make way more than I do.
My sister has about 10 years in state government. She makes $100k salary (public information) but also never works more than maybe 45 hours a week. She has four kids and my mom and I play baby sitter, so I know every time she has a work commitment. I would LOVE to have a job that had that kind of pay with that kind of work-life balance.
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This for state and local as well. I'm a government attorney with 23 years experience and 15 years in government. I make high 5 figures after 15 years. I know for a fact that many of my counterparts in private practice make way more than I do.
My sister has about 10 years in state government. She makes $100k salary (public information) but also never works more than maybe 45 hours a week. She has four kids and my mom and I play baby sitter, so I know every time she has a work commitment. I would LOVE to have a job that had that kind of pay with that kind of work-life balance.
I chose lower pay than the private sector so that I could have work/life balance.
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That's the thing I don't get about some of these complaints. It seems like the people most against government labor are those that do believe in the power of the free market. Except, the labor market is mostly free and these 'cushy' government jobs are pretty much accessible to any qualified individual who wants to apply. Further, most government jobs of this type do pay less than their industry counterparts, but generally compensate for this by offering better benefits and a better work-life balance. I guess I just don't understand what all this complaining is about... the criticisms and complains don't seem to be internally consistent.
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That's the thing I don't get about some of these complaints. It seems like the people most against government labor are those that do believe in the power of the free market. Except, the labor market is mostly free and these 'cushy' government jobs are pretty much accessible to any qualified individual who wants to apply. Further, most government jobs of this type do pay less than their industry counterparts, but generally compensate for this by offering better benefits and a better work-life balance. I guess I just don't understand what all this complaining is about... the criticisms and complains don't seem to be internally consistent.
OMG this. Whenever someone complained about my husband's prior job, he'd say "hey, they are hiring, want me to send you a link?" The answer was generally a disgusted no. "Oh, so I guess it isn't that easy and cushy then, huh?"
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I haven't read this whole thread but have worked at a couple companies that have totally stopped pensions.
I think benefits for govt jobs should be benchmarked to industry. At some point, once say less than X% of private industry offers a certain benefit, then the governement jobs should do the same. This especially includes elected officials.
What X should be is up for debate. I think 20% is reasonable. What happens when all private companies have done away with defined benefit pensions. Why does government get to keep it just because they've always had it.
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I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets.
You have this exactly backwards. Compared to the economy at large, the federal workforce has a proportionately much smaller number of burger flippers and retail workers, and a much bigger proportion of scientists and lawyers. Oh so many lawyers.
There are a lot of janitors for all of those federal facilities, but most of those are private contract workers now, not feds themselves.
Think about the services the federal government provides, compared to the services the rest of the economy provides, and reconsider your assertion about the required education and skill level of the federal workforce. This disparity is the reason why federal pay is higher than average per employee, and yet lower than average per job type. There are a lot of underpaid people in high paying professions working for you. You're welcome.
Working backwards from the bottom of your post, several people on here have documented how the benefits more-or-less make up for the raw pay.
What Federal services are my tax dollars paying for that are better than those of, say, a tradesman or a construction worker? What percentage of federal employees are providing services that I use versus writing regulations? Even in the case of federal scientists, how many are working on science versus writing proposals or regulations? Of those working on raw science, how many of these programs have any promise? In the case of the latter, the government has done some amazing science in the past. We can now blow up the earth, for example, because of our nuclear weapons research. There was ARPAnet and CDMA. These programs are decades past. Beyond sponsoring some device research, what have they done in recent memory?
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I haven't read this whole thread but have worked at a couple companies that have totally stopped pensions.
I think benefits for govt jobs should be benchmarked to industry. At some point, once say less than X% of private industry offers a certain benefit, then the governement jobs should do the same. This especially includes elected officials.
What X should be is up for debate. I think 20% is reasonable. What happens when all private companies have done away with defined benefit pensions. Why does government get to keep it just because they've always had it.
Why are these employees are never subject to layoffs whether the economy is up or down? Why is the number of government employees continually growing absent a demonstrable need to the point where federal spending is about 30% of GDP? In 1913, government spending was was 3% of GDP. Some people on here say, "Well, you can just get a government job yourself!" No, everyone cannot work for the public sector. Illinois is proving this is true, and California is close on its heels. The private sector needs tax and regulatory relief to start growing again. We are also $20 trillion in debt.
I am glad to hear that some parts of our government are staffed with good people who mean well and, to the extent that my experience was atypical, I apologize for what I said earlier. The bad government employees need to be subject to layoffs just like the rest of us. Some whole sectors need to be pared off completely.
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I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets.
You have this exactly backwards. Compared to the economy at large, the federal workforce has a proportionately much smaller number of burger flippers and retail workers, and a much bigger proportion of scientists and lawyers. Oh so many lawyers.
There are a lot of janitors for all of those federal facilities, but most of those are private contract workers now, not feds themselves.
Think about the services the federal government provides, compared to the services the rest of the economy provides, and reconsider your assertion about the required education and skill level of the federal workforce. This disparity is the reason why federal pay is higher than average per employee, and yet lower than average per job type. There are a lot of underpaid people in high paying professions working for you. You're welcome.
Working backwards from the bottom of your post, several people on here have documented how the benefits more-or-less make up for the raw pay.
What Federal services are my tax dollars paying for that are better than those of, say, a tradesman or a construction worker? What percentage of federal employees are providing services that I use versus writing regulations? Even in the case of federal scientists, how many are working on science versus writing proposals or regulations? Of those working on raw science, how many of these programs have any promise? In the case of the latter, the government has done some amazing science in the past. We can now blow up the earth, for example, because of our nuclear weapons research. There was ARPAnet and CDMA. These programs are decades past. Beyond sponsoring some device research, what have they done in recent memory?
A lot of these questions have answers that you could easily look up yourself. A very small proportion of government employees 'write regulations'... I mean, come on.
If you don't know much about scientific work being done by government employees, well, again, it's easy to look around. You may not be as interested in the research being done by the FDA or the EPA, but you may find some cool stuff coming out of the DOE. You can probably guess that there's research being done at the NSA, the DOD, DHS, and the DOE that you have no idea about, but is probably 'worth your hard earned tax dollars'. If you don't know what the government has contributed to basic science beyond nuclear weapons and 'some device research', you may want to take some time to look around.
This of course ignores all of the many competent employees in every day regular non-scientific posts that you never hear about because they keep your world running smoothly.
Just what entire sections of the government are you ready to chop off? You may be surprised at the depth of the services they provide and how those services positively impact your specific day-to-day life.
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A lot of this was brought up back in November last year. Most have had a "wait and see" attitude, since cutting everything has always been a threat. In my 17 years, we've only been hit by the pay freeze (well, after getting delayed at hiring due to one of the hiring freezes, which happen frequently). Newer hires have come in having to pay more into their pension, but changes have only affected new hires, so far. Hopefully that continues to be the case. I don't think it's right for private industry to go back on their word or hiring contracts, and I don't think it's right for the government to do it either. Change the rules for people coming in, but not those who based their career choices on promises made earlier.
As for staffing... When I was the acting foreman for an electric shop, I could have, and would have gladly, ran the shop off 1/3 of the current crew. The good workers had different skills and solid work ethics, and everything that needed to be done could be performed by these select few. The other 2/3 were a waste. They botched jobs that had to be redone. They were lazy. They couldn't/wouldn't perform the most basic tasks. If we could have gotten rid of them, the shop would have run more smoothly and morale would actually improve (after a while, it sucks to be the hard worker when the laziest, most incompetent person makes as much as you do). I'm at a new location, and no longer an electrician, but I see the same situation in this electrical crew. We could easily cut half of maintenance and do great. My crew is already at minimum staff (we have to cover the place 24/7, to put out fires--both literally and figuratively, and have the smallest crew we can have without requiring scheduled overtime). We don't want more on our crew, and are pretty happy with the people we have.
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I haven't read this whole thread but have worked at a couple companies that have totally stopped pensions.
I think benefits for govt jobs should be benchmarked to industry. At some point, once say less than X% of private industry offers a certain benefit, then the governement jobs should do the same. This especially includes elected officials.
What X should be is up for debate. I think 20% is reasonable. What happens when all private companies have done away with defined benefit pensions. Why does government get to keep it just because they've always had it.
Why are these employees are never subject to layoffs whether the economy is up or down? Why is the number of government employees continually growing absent a demonstrable need to the point where federal spending is about 30% of GDP? In 1913, government spending was was 3% of GDP. Some people on here say, "Well, you can just get a government job yourself!" No, everyone cannot work for the public sector. Illinois is proving this is true, and California is close on its heels. The private sector needs tax and regulatory relief to start growing again. We are also $20 trillion in debt.
I am glad to hear that some parts of our government are staffed with good people who mean well and, to the extent that my experience was atypical, I apologize for what I said earlier. The bad government employees need to be subject to layoffs just like the rest of us. Some whole sectors need to be pared off completely.
I agree with you that the government makes it overly hard to lay off poor employees. I honestly don't know why that's the case. As far as the rest, again, those questions can be pretty easily answered.
A lot has changed since 1913. Specifically, we fought 2 World Wars and expanded our military spending to the point where we support a military stronger than the rest of the world combined. Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid were added to the government as well. Defense and 'entitlements' are going to explain a majority of that jump.
Are you saying that California and Illinois are in trouble because they employ too many state workers? Illinois has a lot of issues, but one of their immediate troubles was due to their current Governor refusing to raise state taxes. California has high taxes, but it doesn't seem to be slowing the tech industry down one bit.
We are $20 trillion in debt, but it's contentious to pin down exactly where that shortfall is coming from. Yes the government is large and shrinking it is a noble goal. You mentioned cutting departments out, which ones did you have in mind? Beyond that, I don't see how your desire to lower taxes is going to help fix that national debt. Rather, the economy seems to be humming along pretty well right now by all indications, thus I don't see how corporations are really in desperate need of regulatory and tax relief.
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I haven't read this whole thread but have worked at a couple companies that have totally stopped pensions.
I think benefits for govt jobs should be benchmarked to industry. At some point, once say less than X% of private industry offers a certain benefit, then the governement jobs should do the same. This especially includes elected officials.
What X should be is up for debate. I think 20% is reasonable. What happens when all private companies have done away with defined benefit pensions. Why does government get to keep it just because they've always had it.
Why are these employees are never subject to layoffs whether the economy is up or down? Why is the number of government employees continually growing absent a demonstrable need to the point where federal spending is about 30% of GDP? In 1913, government spending was was 3% of GDP. Some people on here say, "Well, you can just get a government job yourself!" No, everyone cannot work for the public sector. Illinois is proving this is true, and California is close on its heels. The private sector needs tax and regulatory relief to start growing again. We are also $20 trillion in debt.
I am glad to hear that some parts of our government are staffed with good people who mean well and, to the extent that my experience was atypical, I apologize for what I said earlier. The bad government employees need to be subject to layoffs just like the rest of us. Some whole sectors need to be pared off completely.
I agree with you that the government makes it overly hard to lay off poor employees. I honestly don't know why that's the case.
Funny you mention this; as a Fed in a leadership program I learned about this just last week. The General Schedule (and Merit Promotion/Peotection) was introduced to insulate Feds from corruption stemming directly from the top of the executive branch. The idea was to provide employment protection for federal employees to prevent mass layoffs every change in presidency.
I've split my time as a STEM employee in private industry and federal government; there were plenty of worthless employees in both places. In general, good employees will rise to the top or leave for a better opportunity elsewhere. Presently, everyone in my working group all have BS or MS degrees in science and engineering disciplines, and all could jump to private sector positions if they wanted a change of pace. All degrees are from Tier 1 schools as well, with several coworkers holding diplomas from Ivy League schools. Sometimes I think the government is inefficient mantra stems from jealousy about how despite the prevailing attitude of flunkies working for the government, it really is hard to get a government job.
I found private industry just as inefficient as the Feds, and actually more frustrating because managers so often refused to let poor performing employees go. While private industry in theory might be more "efficient" than government, human nature (and folly) seemed to provide a check on maximum efficiency in the corporate sector.
As far as pensions go, they were introduced as a means to encourage long tenure of government employees. I presently see this as valuable, as it's worthwhile having people working in government who have experience serving in multiple presidential administrations and through different political cycles. The FERS program, unlike most state pensions, is extremely well funded and isn't a massive financial liability unlike many state pensions.
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I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets.
You have this exactly backwards. Compared to the economy at large, the federal workforce has a proportionately much smaller number of burger flippers and retail workers, and a much bigger proportion of scientists and lawyers. Oh so many lawyers.
There are a lot of janitors for all of those federal facilities, but most of those are private contract workers now, not feds themselves.
Think about the services the federal government provides, compared to the services the rest of the economy provides, and reconsider your assertion about the required education and skill level of the federal workforce. This disparity is the reason why federal pay is higher than average per employee, and yet lower than average per job type. There are a lot of underpaid people in high paying professions working for you. You're welcome.
Working backwards from the bottom of your post, several people on here have documented how the benefits more-or-less make up for the raw pay.
What Federal services are my tax dollars paying for that are better than those of, say, a tradesman or a construction worker? What percentage of federal employees are providing services that I use versus writing regulations? Even in the case of federal scientists, how many are working on science versus writing proposals or regulations? Of those working on raw science, how many of these programs have any promise? In the case of the latter, the government has done some amazing science in the past. We can now blow up the earth, for example, because of our nuclear weapons research. There was ARPAnet and CDMA. These programs are decades past. Beyond sponsoring some device research, what have they done in recent memory?
A lot of these questions have answers that you could easily look up yourself. A very small proportion of government employees 'write regulations'... I mean, come on.
If you don't know much about scientific work being done by government employees, well, again, it's easy to look around. You may not be as interested in the research being done by the FDA or the EPA, but you may find some cool stuff coming out of the DOE. You can probably guess that there's research being done at the NSA, the DOD, DHS, and the DOE that you have no idea about, but is probably 'worth your hard earned tax dollars'. If you don't know what the government has contributed to basic science beyond nuclear weapons and 'some device research', you may want to take some time to look around.
I see this hype in journalism all the time. Are you a scientist? I just looked on the DOE's website and found project sponsorship for stuff we were promised in Scientific American about 30 years ago. Where is it?
I agree the government has done some amazing stuff in the past. That isn't true today. You asked what I'd cut: No Americans in Space Anymore would be the first to get the axe. The rest should take about a 20% haircut or more until the public debt gets off the hockey stick.
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I haven't read this whole thread but have worked at a couple companies that have totally stopped pensions.
I think benefits for govt jobs should be benchmarked to industry. At some point, once say less than X% of private industry offers a certain benefit, then the governement jobs should do the same. This especially includes elected officials.
What X should be is up for debate. I think 20% is reasonable. What happens when all private companies have done away with defined benefit pensions. Why does government get to keep it just because they've always had it.
Why are these employees are never subject to layoffs whether the economy is up or down? Why is the number of government employees continually growing absent a demonstrable need to the point where federal spending is about 30% of GDP? In 1913, government spending was was 3% of GDP. Some people on here say, "Well, you can just get a government job yourself!" No, everyone cannot work for the public sector. Illinois is proving this is true, and California is close on its heels. The private sector needs tax and regulatory relief to start growing again. We are also $20 trillion in debt.
I am glad to hear that some parts of our government are staffed with good people who mean well and, to the extent that my experience was atypical, I apologize for what I said earlier. The bad government employees need to be subject to layoffs just like the rest of us. Some whole sectors need to be pared off completely.
I agree with you that the government makes it overly hard to lay off poor employees. I honestly don't know why that's the case. As far as the rest, again, those questions can be pretty easily answered.
A lot has changed since 1913. Specifically, we fought 2 World Wars and expanded our military spending to the point where we support a military stronger than the rest of the world combined. Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid were added to the government as well. Defense and 'entitlements' are going to explain a majority of that jump.
Are you saying that California and Illinois are in trouble because they employ too many state workers? Illinois has a lot of issues, but one of their immediate troubles was due to their current Governor refusing to raise state taxes. California has high taxes, but it doesn't seem to be slowing the tech industry down one bit.
You can't raise taxes in Illinois because everyone with means is moving out. You can live in another state and still work in Illinois. I have colleagues who do it. You can't squeeze water out of a rock.
High taxes are slowing everything down in California. Businesses are moving out in droves. The state has the 49th worst business climate out of 50 states. The tech that remains is stuck in place for a variety of reasons. For example, it would cost Northrop Grumman a fortune to move its satellite high-bays to another state. Other businesses can't move because their senior employees won't move and they have infrastructure that's very expensive to move. Our own CEO has said this.
It's funny how people on here have the mindset of cutting their own spending to resolve budget problems but then the government needs to TAX TAX TAX to resolve its problems.
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There is certainly government waste but I see it more in poor planning in procedures and far less so in manpower/salaries/benefits. Of the 3 agencies my husband has worked for, all have been understaffed. It's more problems like ordering product X before approval to use product X, not getting approval and the product going to waste. Or a training is offered in State A and State B. State A is sending its employees to State B and vice versa. If they looked into it further, they would realize the error and have everyone train in their home state saving on airfare and hotels.
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That is our experience, as well, Blonde Lawyer.
It also is notable that while raw numbers of federal civilian employees have grown over the decades, the number of civilian feds employed PER CAPITA has shrunk dramatically from its peak under Nixon (14.4 feds/1,000 U.S. citizens). The last 3 presidents have chopped the shit out of the civilian workforce, number wise, through a combination of hiring freezes and attrition.
Number of civilian employees per capita reached an all time low for the modern era under Obama: 8.5 civilian feds/1,000 U.S. citizens.
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That is our experience, as well, Blonde Lawyer.
It also is notable that while raw numbers of federal civilian employees have grown over the decades, the number of civilian feds employed PER CAPITA has shrunk dramatically from its peak under Nixon (14.4 feds/1,000 U.S. citizens). The last 3 presidents have chopped the shit out of the civilian workforce, number wise, through a combination of hiring freezes and attrition.
Number of civilian employees per capita reached an all time low for the modern era under Obama: 8.5 civilian feds/1,000 U.S. citizens.
I can only speak for my office/location, but we were forced to cut 25% of our federal work force over the last 2 years....the work load has not decreased proportionately.
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If the number of employees versus the population is shrinking and the roads and infrastructure are crumbling (except in DC) and spending over the past 100 years has gone up like a hockey stick, we need to ask ourselves what's being done with the money:
http://stats.areppim.com/stats/stats_usxrecxspendxdlr.htm
For example, why is DC the richest area in the world? Is our public money being skimmed off to line the pockets of those living there?
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If the number of employees versus the population is shrinking and the roads and infrastructure are crumbling (except in DC) and spending over the past 100 years has gone up like a hockey stick, we need to ask ourselves what's being done with the money:
http://stats.areppim.com/stats/stats_usxrecxspendxdlr.htm
For example, why is DC the richest area in the world? Is our public money being skimmed off to line the pockets of those living there?
Medicare, Medicaid, SS, The Military. That's the vast majority of gov't spending, and all have been increasing. This is not secret knowledge. Are you trolling?
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I wish I had the numbers, but apparently the vast majority of government employees are on the lower end of the pay scale; in jobs that require less education or lower skill sets.
You have this exactly backwards. Compared to the economy at large, the federal workforce has a proportionately much smaller number of burger flippers and retail workers, and a much bigger proportion of scientists and lawyers. Oh so many lawyers.
There are a lot of janitors for all of those federal facilities, but most of those are private contract workers now, not feds themselves.
Think about the services the federal government provides, compared to the services the rest of the economy provides, and reconsider your assertion about the required education and skill level of the federal workforce. This disparity is the reason why federal pay is higher than average per employee, and yet lower than average per job type. There are a lot of underpaid people in high paying professions working for you. You're welcome.
Working backwards from the bottom of your post, several people on here have documented how the benefits more-or-less make up for the raw pay.
What Federal services are my tax dollars paying for that are better than those of, say, a tradesman or a construction worker? What percentage of federal employees are providing services that I use versus writing regulations? Even in the case of federal scientists, how many are working on science versus writing proposals or regulations? Of those working on raw science, how many of these programs have any promise? In the case of the latter, the government has done some amazing science in the past. We can now blow up the earth, for example, because of our nuclear weapons research. There was ARPAnet and CDMA. These programs are decades past. Beyond sponsoring some device research, what have they done in recent memory?
A lot of these questions have answers that you could easily look up yourself. A very small proportion of government employees 'write regulations'... I mean, come on.
If you don't know much about scientific work being done by government employees, well, again, it's easy to look around. You may not be as interested in the research being done by the FDA or the EPA, but you may find some cool stuff coming out of the DOE. You can probably guess that there's research being done at the NSA, the DOD, DHS, and the DOE that you have no idea about, but is probably 'worth your hard earned tax dollars'. If you don't know what the government has contributed to basic science beyond nuclear weapons and 'some device research', you may want to take some time to look around.
I see this hype in journalism all the time. Are you a scientist? I just looked on the DOE's website and found project sponsorship for stuff we were promised in Scientific American about 30 years ago. Where is it?
I agree the government has done some amazing stuff in the past. That isn't true today. You asked what I'd cut: No Americans in Space Anymore would be the first to get the axe. The rest should take about a 20% haircut or more until the public debt gets off the hockey stick.
It sounds so simple doesn't it? Just cut the programs that don't provide tangible immediate value and the budget will magically be fixed. 20% off each department should just mean laying off one out of every five people, surely there's enough dead weight for that.
Do you have any deeper thoughts on how this might be implemented for a specific department? Do you know what NASA's current budget is today and how it gets allocated? What 20% do you want to cut off of the DoD's budget? What about the DHS? Did you know these two departments are currently desperate to hire more qualified individuals but can't because there already aren't enough qualified people out there? Is that reduction in the strength of the USA's national security worth the amount of savings it will contribute to lessen the deficit? Do you even know how much it would lessen the deficit? You can probably guess it would be way less than 20%.
if the best you can do is go to the DOEs website and look at their promoted press releases, then you're missing about 99% of the research that's coming out of the National Labs.
It's a really complex problem, and unfortunately the discussion seems to have derailed the thread. But don't you think that if it were this easy that it would have been done? Treating it as such a simple issue should clue you into the fact that you may want to do a bit more research of your own on how cuts to specific departments might impact your day to day life. Plus, as already said, the vast majority of Federal spending these days is military and entitlements. Complaining about federal workers receiving retirement benefits that were promised to them as a condition of their employment agreement doesn't seem like the best place to start.
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Most Americans take for granted the services that their government provides, because they are provided seamlessly and invisibly. Nobody notices when the lights and water just always seem to work. They assume their food is safe to eat, that the courts will review cases and that prisoners are secure, their mail gets delivered, that the Russians will not invade Alaska. We expect the internet to connect us, and our money supply be stable and respected, and our federal lands and wildlife to be there for us to visit, and our weather forecasts to be updated hourly, and our social security checks to always arrive on time.
People are generally not enthused to pay for things they have never had to live without. We don't recognize the value provided by federal services with record efficiency rates and fewer employees than ever before (excluding our ballooning military) because we take for granted those things we have always had.
Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
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Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich. Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars, on top of the excellent TSP, excellent health care, excellent time off, excellent work life balance. In 3 years time my wife will get a full day (in addition to sick time) off every two weeks. That accrues without limit. It's not unheard of for people to retire from the government and get 12-24 months of pay as a parting gift.
I would easily try to get a federal job if I could stand the shit-show that software development is at the federal level. I'm not making it up; I've seen it first hand, it's just awful.
Edit, I just read the federal employees are now capped on their annual leave accrual. Never mind about that part.
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I see this hype in journalism all the time. Are you a scientist? I just looked on the DOE's website and found project sponsorship for stuff we were promised in Scientific American about 30 years ago. Where is it?
I agree the government has done some amazing stuff in the past. That isn't true today. You asked what I'd cut: No Americans in Space Anymore would be the first to get the axe. The rest should take about a 20% haircut or more until the public debt gets off the hockey stick.
Just because you aren't aware of it doesn't mean it's not happening. The Navy, Health and Human Services, Army, and NASA are all on the top 300 list for US patents.
I work for the Navy and get briefings on things that I'm absolutely amazed are being developed.
The reason I was oblivious though? There's no reason for a normal civilian to either know about them, or to care enough about them. Does random MMM forum poster care about 100% biodiesel jet fuel? Probably not. But it was developed and has potential uses outside the military. If commercial airlines started using it, would you ever even know?
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We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich.
Is it the federal pension that you find so morally objectionable? Because the reason the federal pension still exists while private pensions are in decline is that the federal pension system is fully funded, responsibly managed, and not raided to juice quarterly earnings the way so many corporate pension plans were. We should be celebrating the fact that the federal government appears to be more fiscally responsible than private enterprise, at least in this one department.
Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars,
First, gs15 is the highest gs grade available so that's bit of an unfair comparison to your average worker. More like corporate executive pay, and I assure you those folks get great benefits.
Second, like all gs employees 15s just endured a three year pay freeze. 0% raises, set by congress, regardless of job performance. How much more do you want to cut?
Third, the pension is only valuable if you stay in federal service for your entire career and work until traditional retirement age. Early retirees get hosed. Anyone who leaves for private sector gets hosed (on the pension, but paid a bunch more once they get out). From that perspective, the pension only partially offsets their lower paychecks for all of those decades.
Fourth, federal employees contribute 4.4% of their pay each year towards pensions that only pay out 1% per year of service. A person's salary is basically irrelevant in this case, because it is all based on percentages, so you can stop trying to exaggerate the situation by quoting "millions" in pension value without mentioning the amounts paid in.
So much dishonesty here it upsets me.
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Edit, I just read the federal employees are now capped on their annual leave accrual. Never mind about that part.
Federal civilian gs employees have always had a cap on accrued annual leave, and ses employees have had a cap for the past 23 years.
I'm getting the feeling you don't really know what you're talking about, but if you would like to continue to disparage federal employees I will attempt to continue patiently explaining why your preconceived notions are mistaken.
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Most Americans take for granted the services that their government provides, because they are provided seamlessly and invisibly. Nobody notices when the lights and water just always seem to work. They assume their food is safe to eat, that the courts will review cases and that prisoners are secure, their mail gets delivered, that the Russians will not invade Alaska. We expect the internet to connect us, and our money supply be stable and respected, and our federal lands and wildlife to be there for us to visit, and our weather forecasts to be updated hourly, and our social security checks to always arrive on time.
People are generally not enthused to pay for things they have never had to live without. We don't recognize the value provided by federal services with record efficiency rates and fewer employees than ever before (excluding our ballooning military) because we take for granted those things we have always had.
Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
I am in a federal employee family so we are already 'employed'. However, we agree we are overcompensated. Probably VERY overcompensated.
Had I personally to do things over, I would have went the government route...or become an Aircraft mechanic (but that's another story). I would have racked up more money and likely enjoyed a better life balance. oh well. Too bad, so sad for me. At this point in time, its moot. I'm glad DW was 'smarter'.
What I don't buy though is your suggestion that 'if you don't like it, go get a gov't job'. That's akin to credentialism. I don't need to be an Astronaut to have an opinion on how much of my money should be spent on space programs. I may not end up with an actual choice, but I can certainly voice my displeasure (or kudos).
Efficiency (or effectivity) matters to me. I wish it would matter more to most. We all end up ultimately paying for government workers. We all have a legit say whether we are satisfied with the current process or not.
I'm not content with the 'value' provided by our government. It could and should be better. If a piece of that is minor cuts to federal employee benefits, so be it..
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We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich.
Is it the federal pension that you find so morally objectionable? Because the reason the federal pension still exists while private pensions are in decline is that the federal pension system is fully funded, responsibly managed, and not raided to juice quarterly earnings the way so many corporate pension plans were. We should be celebrating the fact that the federal government appears to be more fiscally responsible than private enterprise, at least in this one department.
You are arguing against things I am not claiming. Everything you mention is great. All I am saying is that federal employees are not underpaid, particularly because their benefits, and especially their pension, are excellent.
Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars,
First, gs15 is the highest gs grade available so that's bit of an unfair comparison to your average worker. More like corporate executive pay, and I assure you those folks get great benefits.
Second, like all gs employees 15s just endured a three year pay freeze. 0% raises, set by congress, regardless of job performance. How much more do you want to cut?
I agree that GS15 is high, but its still pretty good from GS13 on up. Re the pay freezes, they still got COLAS, and spot bonuses, and average middle class wages haven't grown much either. So that seems appropriate.
Third, the pension is only valuable if you stay in federal service for your entire career and work until traditional retirement age. Early retirees get hosed. Anyone who leaves for private sector gets hosed (on the pension, but paid a bunch more once they get out). From that perspective, the pension only partially offsets their lower paychecks for all of those decades.
Yeah, but that's how pensions work. I'll agree early retirees don't get as much benefit from the pension, but we are talking about average Jane worker, not people interested in RE. If you want to retire early, you want to front load your earnings as much as possible and seek highest immediate dollars. Plus, if I'm not mistaken after a certain bit early retirees can still get some of their pension.
Fourth, federal employees contribute 4.4% of their pay each year towards pensions that only pay out 1% per year of service. A person's salary is basically irrelevant in this case, because it is all based on percentages, so you can stop trying to exaggerate the situation by quoting "millions" in pension value without mentioning the amounts paid in.
So much dishonesty here it upsets me.
According to this (https://www.opm.gov/blogs/Retire/2013/5/13/FERS-Revised-Annuity-Employee-FERS-RAE/), it's 3.1%, and it's only for people hired after 2012. And it seems pretty generous to pay in 3.1% to get up 1% per year of service for as long as you live in retirement. Im not exaggerating. If my wife retires at 60, with 30 years of service, and lives 30 years, she will collect millions in todays dollars. On top of her TSP. And SS.
Im not sure what's dishonest, except your 4.4% claim, and the implication that all federal employees are paying it. And, it's just an opinion. Federal pay is fine.
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I agree that GS15 is high, but its still pretty good from GS13 on up. Re the pay freezes, they still got COLAS, and spot bonuses, and average middle class wages haven't grown much either. So that seems appropriate.
GS 13 through 15 are about 20% of the federal workforce. If your claim is that the top quintile is better paid than everyone else, I can't really disagree with that. That is true for any arbitrary number.
No, feds did not get a COLA in 3 of the past 8 years. You are mistaken.
Bonuses? What are bonuses? As a general rule, federal employees do not get bonuses. Also no profit sharing, Christmas party, or free office coffee.
Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Im not sure what's dishonest, except your 4.4% claim
The bipartisan budget act of 2013 raised the federal employee pension contribution from 3.1 to 4.4% for all employees hired after 12/31/13, and every employees going forward from here. Trump is backing the GOP proposal to raise that to 10.4%.
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I'm not content with the 'value' provided by our government. It could and should be better.
Can you specifically list the additional services the gov't ought to be providing you?
20% off the DoD spending...
Looking at just the discretionary budget, a 20% cut would be ~$120B or, about a third of the current projected deficit.
Problem is, this kind of cut comes with all the same hard questions that the pan-gov't "haircut" had. Which service bears the burnt of the reduction? How many bases have to close and how many aircraft carriers get mothballed? What aircraft get grounded and which weapon procurements get cancelled? Which domains have their R&D cancelled? How many servicemen will need to be released and can the industrial base handle the layoffs that would accompany all these program cancellations?
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Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Sorry folks this is entirely unrelated:
Sol can you send me the link for this one? The latest releases I've seen show overall wages up ~2.5% and real wages up about ~0.9% for the last year (not YTD). I can't find anything more specific than that.
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Sol, thank you for pointing out what feds have to pay in. Starguru, how much does your wife make? I'm not seeing the math work out on my end. I'm assuming a $75,000 salary, 1% is $750, multiplied by thirty years of service, she would get $22,500/year in pension. If she lived another 30 years (most people don't) she would have received $675,000 from her pension.
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I agree that GS15 is high, but its still pretty good from GS13 on up. Re the pay freezes, they still got COLAS, and spot bonuses, and average middle class wages haven't grown much either. So that seems appropriate.
GS 13 through 15 are about 20% of the federal workforce. If your claim is that the top quintile is better paid than everyone else, I can't really disagree with that. That is true for any arbitrary number.
No, feds did not get a COLA in 3 of the past 8 years. You are mistaken.
Bonuses? What are bonuses? As a general rule, federal employees do not get bonuses. Also no profit sharing, Christmas party, or free office coffee.
Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Im not sure what's dishonest, except your 4.4% claim
The bipartisan budget act of 2013 raised the federal employee pension contribution from 3.1 to 4.4% for all employees hired after 12/31/13, and every employees going forward from here. Trump is backing the GOP proposal to raise that to 10.4%.
So at 4.4%, my wife would pay about $6500 over 30 years to collect $50k a year for as long as she lived, assuming her salary remained static. Her total contributions would be ~$195k. It would take her 4 years to break even and then pure profit from there on out. The worker making $80k a year would about $3500 a year, which after 30 years amounts to ~$105k. The pension would be $24k a year. Takes a little over 4 years to break even. I know, the horror. And, some federal workers get more than 1% times years of service.
While FERS is well funded the CSRS system is not.
Again, my point is when you take the salary, pension, health care, time off, TSP, work life balance, etc, federal employees are paid ok. Could some make more in the private sector? Probably. They'd be working a lot harder for it though.
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Starguru, just a little life advice. You might want to avoid suggesting your wife is overpaid and doesn't work hard enough or as hard as others. LOL.
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Sol, thank you for pointing out what feds have to pay in. Starguru, how much does your wife make? I'm not seeing the math work out on my end. I'm assuming a $75,000 salary, 1% is $750, multiplied by thirty years of service, she would get $22,500/year in pension. If she lived another 30 years (most people don't) she would have received $675,000 from her pension.
She is making about 150k in the DC area as an attorney in the federal government.
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Starguru, just a little life advice. You might want to avoid suggesting your wife is overpaid and doesn't work hard enough or as hard as others. LOL.
lol I know better than to say that. It's not what I'm saying. I'm saying she is paid pretty well given her work life balance. She agrees with me. Life is good.
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Sol, thank you for pointing out what feds have to pay in. Starguru, how much does your wife make? I'm not seeing the math work out on my end. I'm assuming a $75,000 salary, 1% is $750, multiplied by thirty years of service, she would get $22,500/year in pension. If she lived another 30 years (most people don't) she would have received $675,000 from her pension.
She is making about 150k in the DC area as an attorney in the federal government.
Your wife is a long term high ranking GS15 working in a very HCOL area who's pay should be comparable to a private sector Atty making at least 3x more. A new hire mid-level GS-5 or GS-6 with a Bachelor's degree starts at $31k and $39k depending on any state COLA. I'm not a Fed (except former armed forces) but a former state employee who's benefita and pay are much better than the Feds. Even then I still would have earned much more in the private sector if there was a similar job available (wasn't really but similar degree holder with so.ilair experience made a ton more). I personally feel that the average mid level feds are under paid.
Yeah I tell her if she ever wants to leave that's the minimum she should accept. And she'd have to work like 1000 more hours a year.
This is interesting.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/reports-publications/profile-of-federal-civilian-non-postal-employees/
From that
85.67% covered under CSRS
90.66% White-Collar (27.01% Professional, 37.29% Administrative, 26.35% Technical, Clerical, Other), 9.34% Blue-Collar
$82,709 average salary adjusted for locality
so just 27% of federal workers are "professional", which I take to mean lawyers or doctors or similar. Im curious what "technical, clerical, other" means. But given that only 27% are professional I am actually surprised the average is 87k, including benefits. Seems pretty good to me.
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"So at 4.4%, my wife would pay about $6500 over 30 years to collect $50k a year for as long as she lived, assuming her salary remained static. Her total contributions would be ~$195k. It would take her 4 years to break even and then pure profit from there on out. "
I had no idea that pension money taken out over 30 years was left in a box on a shelf all that time. It seems like there could have been some, you know, earnings of some type on the money all those years.
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Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich. Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars, on top of the excellent TSP, excellent health care, excellent time off, excellent work life balance. In 3 years time my wife will get a full day (in addition to sick time) off every two weeks. That accrues without limit. It's not unheard of for people to retire from the government and get 12-24 months of pay as a parting gift.
I would easily try to get a federal job if I could stand the shit-show that software development is at the federal level. I'm not making it up; I've seen it first hand, it's just awful.
Edit, I just read the federal employees are now capped on their annual leave accrual. Never mind about that part.
Pretty much everyone at my former job retires at a GS-15 or above. I mean, I suppose some don't make it past a 14? But I doubt it. I remember attending the retirement party 20 years ago of someone who was there 40 years. He did, quite literally, get paid for 2 years after because of accrued vacation and sick time.
I am sometime jealous, but really don't want to deal with DC traffic anymore, one of the reasons I left 20 years ago.
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This is interesting.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/reports-publications/profile-of-federal-civilian-non-postal-employees/
From that
85.67% covered under CSRS
90.66% White-Collar (27.01% Professional, 37.29% Administrative, 26.35% Technical, Clerical, Other), 9.34% Blue-Collar
$82,709 average salary adjusted for locality
so just 27% of federal workers are "professional", which I take to mean lawyers or doctors or similar. Im curious what "technical, clerical, other" means. But given that only 27% are professional I am actually surprised the average is 87k, including benefits. Seems pretty good to me.
I'm not actually sure how that's even possible. I'm a GS-12 in the Los Angeles locality which I believe is the highest locality in the nation. From what I understand, outside of DC, most people never even make it to the GS-12 level. The lowest pay for GS-12 in Los Angeles is $81,319.
Explaining it away by people being long tenured doesn't work, because GS-11 is the where you can finally get above $82k with step increases, and that's at step 8.
So unless we've got a bunch of administrative people in the federal government at the GS-11+ level (edit: Also missed where it says average grade is 10, so now I'm even more confused), who have been in service for 20+ years (15 years to get to step 8), $82k as an average seems so out of whack. The other option I guess is that we have WAY more SES's than I originally though; so many that it skews that average in a drastic way.
Edit: Oh, and I also noticed it says only 51% have a bachelor's degree. I'm suddenly starting to feel significantly underpaid.
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"So at 4.4%, my wife would pay about $6500 over 30 years to collect $50k a year for as long as she lived, assuming her salary remained static. Her total contributions would be ~$195k. It would take her 4 years to break even and then pure profit from there on out. "
I had no idea that pension money taken out over 30 years was left in a box on a shelf all that time. It seems like there could have been some, you know, earnings of some type on the money all those years.
Yeah, pretty much. I think whatever isn't used to pay out to present annuitants is used loaned to the government somehow.
Sure, but the original argument by Sol was that feds have to pay 4.4% into the system, to get *only 1% per year of service*, as if that is a bad deal. The FERS system is both generous and well run. The CSRS system on the other hand....yikes.....
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Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich. Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars, on top of the excellent TSP, excellent health care, excellent time off, excellent work life balance. In 3 years time my wife will get a full day (in addition to sick time) off every two weeks. That accrues without limit. It's not unheard of for people to retire from the government and get 12-24 months of pay as a parting gift.
I would easily try to get a federal job if I could stand the shit-show that software development is at the federal level. I'm not making it up; I've seen it first hand, it's just awful.
Edit, I just read the federal employees are now capped on their annual leave accrual. Never mind about that part.
Pretty much everyone at my former job retires at a GS-15 or above. I mean, I suppose some don't make it past a 14? But I doubt it. I remember attending the retirement party 20 years ago of someone who was there 40 years. He did, quite literally, get paid for 2 years after because of accrued vacation and sick time.
I am sometime jealous, but really don't want to deal with DC traffic anymore, one of the reasons I left 20 years ago.
Most of the people DW works with are retired military, so they are getting military pension, and when they retire they will get their government pension, on top of SS. They are all GS15s. Very early in my career I worked for a government agency and I could have sworn someone retired and got paid for some ridiculous amount of vacation time. But from what I discovered earlier newer employees are capped at some (generous) number of days.
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I agree that GS15 is high, but its still pretty good from GS13 on up. Re the pay freezes, they still got COLAS, and spot bonuses, and average middle class wages haven't grown much either. So that seems appropriate.
GS 13 through 15 are about 20% of the federal workforce. If your claim is that the top quintile is better paid than everyone else, I can't really disagree with that. That is true for any arbitrary number.
No, feds did not get a COLA in 3 of the past 8 years. You are mistaken.
Bonuses? What are bonuses? As a general rule, federal employees do not get bonuses. Also no profit sharing, Christmas party, or free office coffee.
Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Im not sure what's dishonest, except your 4.4% claim
The bipartisan budget act of 2013 raised the federal employee pension contribution from 3.1 to 4.4% for all employees hired after 12/31/13, and every employees going forward from here. Trump is backing the GOP proposal to raise that to 10.4%.
So at 4.4%, my wife would pay about $6500 over 30 years to collect $50k a year for as long as she lived, assuming her salary remained static. Her total contributions would be ~$195k. It would take her 4 years to break even and then pure profit from there on out. The worker making $80k a year would about $3500 a year, which after 30 years amounts to ~$105k. The pension would be $24k a year. Takes a little over 4 years to break even. I know, the horror. And, some federal workers get more than 1% times years of service.
While FERS is well funded the CSRS system is not.
Again, my point is when you take the salary, pension, health care, time off, TSP, work life balance, etc, federal employees are paid ok. Could some make more in the private sector? Probably. They'd be working a lot harder for it though.
$6500 invested annually over 30 years is 450k at a 5% ROR. Suppose the government matches that, and it's 900k in a pot. Retire at 60 and 18 years of payments... What is the average life expectancy?
Sol, thank you for pointing out what feds have to pay in. Starguru, how much does your wife make? I'm not seeing the math work out on my end. I'm assuming a $75,000 salary, 1% is $750, multiplied by thirty years of service, she would get $22,500/year in pension. If she lived another 30 years (most people don't) she would have received $675,000 from her pension.
She is making about 150k in the DC area as an attorney in the federal government.
Your wife is a long term high ranking GS15 working in a very HCOL area who's pay should be comparable to a private sector Atty making at least 3x more. A new hire mid-level GS-5 or GS-6 with a Bachelor's degree starts at $31k and $39k depending on any state COLA. I'm not a Fed (except former armed forces) but a former state employee who's benefita and pay are much better than the Feds. Even then I still would have earned much more in the private sector if there was a similar job available (wasn't really but similar degree holder with so.ilair experience made a ton more). I personally feel that the average mid level feds are under paid.
Yeah I tell her if she ever wants to leave that's the minimum she should accept. And she'd have to work like 1000 more hours a year.
This is interesting.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/reports-publications/profile-of-federal-civilian-non-postal-employees/
From that
85.67% covered under CSRS
90.66% White-Collar (27.01% Professional, 37.29% Administrative, 26.35% Technical, Clerical, Other), 9.34% Blue-Collar
$82,709 average salary adjusted for locality
so just 27% of federal workers are "professional", which I take to mean lawyers or doctors or similar. Im curious what "technical, clerical, other" means. But given that only 27% are professional I am actually surprised the average is 87k, including benefits. Seems pretty good to me.
I think those stats are wrong. CSRS ended in 1987 and all future employees were placed under FERS. So unless 85% of federal employees are 50+ years old (and the source says the average age is 47), this cannot be right. Further down it states Retirement Plan - 4.2% Civil Service Retirement, 91.53% Federal Employees Retirement System.
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I don't know how the Feds break down "professional" vs. "Other" jobs. I imagine someone like a engineer would be considered other or technical even though they have a degree and professional license. Lots of non- PhD scientist are considered Techs or other. Probably the same for many jobs. Law enforcement, compliance, regulatory type jobs that require degrees are probably "other" rather than professional. All I know is that if I look at the OPM job site there are lots of degree-required low income jobs that outside the feds would be considered professional.
I would imagine anything that requires a college degree is professional.
The " Technical, Clerical, Other" category seems fishy. How is clerical different than "Administrative" which seems to be its own category? But either way, even if you take the technical category to be high paying thats still about 50% or the federal work force is in a professional or otherwise high paying position. The average is still 87k. Id love to see the median.
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I agree that GS15 is high, but its still pretty good from GS13 on up. Re the pay freezes, they still got COLAS, and spot bonuses, and average middle class wages haven't grown much either. So that seems appropriate.
GS 13 through 15 are about 20% of the federal workforce. If your claim is that the top quintile is better paid than everyone else, I can't really disagree with that. That is true for any arbitrary number.
No, feds did not get a COLA in 3 of the past 8 years. You are mistaken.
Bonuses? What are bonuses? As a general rule, federal employees do not get bonuses. Also no profit sharing, Christmas party, or free office coffee.
Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Im not sure what's dishonest, except your 4.4% claim
The bipartisan budget act of 2013 raised the federal employee pension contribution from 3.1 to 4.4% for all employees hired after 12/31/13, and every employees going forward from here. Trump is backing the GOP proposal to raise that to 10.4%.
So at 4.4%, my wife would pay about $6500 over 30 years to collect $50k a year for as long as she lived, assuming her salary remained static. Her total contributions would be ~$195k. It would take her 4 years to break even and then pure profit from there on out. The worker making $80k a year would about $3500 a year, which after 30 years amounts to ~$105k. The pension would be $24k a year. Takes a little over 4 years to break even. I know, the horror. And, some federal workers get more than 1% times years of service.
While FERS is well funded the CSRS system is not.
Again, my point is when you take the salary, pension, health care, time off, TSP, work life balance, etc, federal employees are paid ok. Could some make more in the private sector? Probably. They'd be working a lot harder for it though.
$6500 invested annually over 30 years is 450k at a 5% ROR. Suppose the government matches that, and it's 900k in a pot. Retire at 60 and 18 years of payments... What is the average life expectancy?
Sol, thank you for pointing out what feds have to pay in. Starguru, how much does your wife make? I'm not seeing the math work out on my end. I'm assuming a $75,000 salary, 1% is $750, multiplied by thirty years of service, she would get $22,500/year in pension. If she lived another 30 years (most people don't) she would have received $675,000 from her pension.
She is making about 150k in the DC area as an attorney in the federal government.
Your wife is a long term high ranking GS15 working in a very HCOL area who's pay should be comparable to a private sector Atty making at least 3x more. A new hire mid-level GS-5 or GS-6 with a Bachelor's degree starts at $31k and $39k depending on any state COLA. I'm not a Fed (except former armed forces) but a former state employee who's benefita and pay are much better than the Feds. Even then I still would have earned much more in the private sector if there was a similar job available (wasn't really but similar degree holder with so.ilair experience made a ton more). I personally feel that the average mid level feds are under paid.
Yeah I tell her if she ever wants to leave that's the minimum she should accept. And she'd have to work like 1000 more hours a year.
This is interesting.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/reports-publications/profile-of-federal-civilian-non-postal-employees/
From that
85.67% covered under CSRS
90.66% White-Collar (27.01% Professional, 37.29% Administrative, 26.35% Technical, Clerical, Other), 9.34% Blue-Collar
$82,709 average salary adjusted for locality
so just 27% of federal workers are "professional", which I take to mean lawyers or doctors or similar. Im curious what "technical, clerical, other" means. But given that only 27% are professional I am actually surprised the average is 87k, including benefits. Seems pretty good to me.
I think those stats are wrong. CSRS ended in 1987 and all future employees were placed under FERS. So unless 85% of federal employees are 50+ years old (and the source says the average age is 47), this cannot be right. Further down it states Retirement Plan - 4.2% Civil Service Retirement, 91.53% Federal Employees Retirement System.
I agree something seems off. But it is the OPM's own webpage....quality government results at work.....
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Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich. Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars, on top of the excellent TSP, excellent health care, excellent time off, excellent work life balance. In 3 years time my wife will get a full day (in addition to sick time) off every two weeks. That accrues without limit. It's not unheard of for people to retire from the government and get 12-24 months of pay as a parting gift.
I would easily try to get a federal job if I could stand the shit-show that software development is at the federal level. I'm not making it up; I've seen it first hand, it's just awful.
Edit, I just read the federal employees are now capped on their annual leave accrual. Never mind about that part.
Pretty much everyone at my former job retires at a GS-15 or above. I mean, I suppose some don't make it past a 14? But I doubt it. I remember attending the retirement party 20 years ago of someone who was there 40 years. He did, quite literally, get paid for 2 years after because of accrued vacation and sick time.
I am sometime jealous, but really don't want to deal with DC traffic anymore, one of the reasons I left 20 years ago.
GS-15 or above? So you mean to tell me that everyone becomes a manager or is in the SES at your old workplace? I would have never guessed that such was possible.
Our workforce of 9,000 Attorneys, Engineers, Scientists has very few that ever reach GS-15 and maybe 40 total SES???
Achieving GS-14 is reasonable in our agency, but not easy. However, it isn't competitive either (everyone can get a GS-14 slot if they are willing to go through the 2 years of hell to get there).
Yes, GS-14 is definitely achievable with time if you maintain a consistently productive, high-quality research program in the biological sciences, but GS-15 is much tougher.
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My cost center has a single GS-15 overseeing our area, supervising approximately 100 people. Then there are only four 14s below that.
GS-11 is eventually available to almost anyone who puts in enough years and is good at their job. 12 and above requires a PhD or management of large teams of people, like a regional office.
The notion that an entire office would be 15s seems ludicrous to me. I know the grades vary between agencies, and there does appear to be some grade inflation in DC due to those folks all working on national programs, but an entire office of the most senior feds possible? She must be an agency level lawyer, as that's basically the only GS job where folks routinely rise that high, and there it is only in an attempt to make their pay more competitive with their private sector counterparts.
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My cost center has a single GS-15 overseeing our area, supervising approximately 100 people. Then there are only four 14s below that.
GS-11 is eventually available to almost anyone who puts in enough years and is good at their job. 12 and above requires a PhD or management of large teams of people, like a regional office.
The notion that an entire office would be 15s seems ludicrous to me. I know the grades vary between agencies, and there does appear to be some grade inflation in DC due to those folks all working on national programs, but an entire office of the most senior feds possible? She must be an agency level lawyer, as that's basically the only GS job where folks routinely rise that high, and there it is only in an attempt to make their pay more competitive with their private sector counterparts.
I believe you, and that is completely different from what is going in DC, at least as far as I can see. a PhD for 12? That's insane. I just clarified with her and DW says all the "seasoned" attorneys in her office are GS15s. She is not an agency level, just a (very-good and respected) lawyer who is known to get shit done.
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In general, I wish we could have regular discourse about all the jobs feds have and services they provide without having to be defensive all the time but alas. Hell I didn't even know my agency did anything other than its eponymous task before I started working there and I was *in* the field so to speak during grad school.
It seems something happened a few decades ago, maybe it was Vietnam, but there was a transition from the good, government that citizens trusted and had positive press to the huge evil machine that quietly goes about its business while taking a beating from politicians and most of the citizenry and perks up every now and then to protect what it can.
I'm one of those technical feds. We've seen it with response rates on surveys. Households, institutions, whatever response unit - used to take it as a badge of honor to fill out voluntary federal surveys (we have required ones too but I'm just talking the optional ones) if it meant it could help a researcher or policymaker somewhere down the line. It was a civic duty. We had voluntary response rates of 98%, 99% regularly for every cycle. About 10 years ago, our rates had slowly fallen but were still in the low 90s or high 80s and quality was good. Now though we're fighting to get to 70% and paying a LOT more in the process. People generally mistrust the federal government more so it seems and partially as a result, the services provided are less efficient.
As for DC, I think comparisons tend to suffer from selection bias. You have many agency HQs so naturally they are more top heavy (with prof, tech, admin, etc.) than corresponding field offices (which would have a higher proportion of clerks, etc.) located elsewhere around the country.
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My cost center has a single GS-15 overseeing our area, supervising approximately 100 people. Then there are only four 14s below that.
GS-11 is eventually available to almost anyone who puts in enough years and is good at their job. 12 and above requires a PhD or management of large teams of people, like a regional office.
The notion that an entire office would be 15s seems ludicrous to me. I know the grades vary between agencies, and there does appear to be some grade inflation in DC due to those folks all working on national programs, but an entire office of the most senior feds possible? She must be an agency level lawyer, as that's basically the only GS job where folks routinely rise that high, and there it is only in an attempt to make their pay more competitive with their private sector counterparts.
I believe you, and that is completely different from what is going in DC, at least as far as I can see. a PhD for 12? That's insane. I just clarified with her and DW says all the "seasoned" attorneys in her office are GS15s. She is not an agency level, just a (very-good and respected) lawyer who is known to get shit done.
. From the same website I linked above. 2014 data:
Table 3: Typical education required and starting salary, by selected GS level
GS level Education level Starting salary, 2014
GS-1
No high school diploma $17,981
GS-3
High school diploma 22,058
GS-4
Associate's degree 24,763
GS-5
Bachelor's degree 27,705
GS-9
Master's degree 41,979
GS-11
Doctoral or professional degree 50,790
Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Why are there even grades above 11 then if a Phd or professional is supposed to cap at 11?
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My cost center has a single GS-15 overseeing our area, supervising approximately 100 people. Then there are only four 14s below that.
GS-11 is eventually available to almost anyone who puts in enough years and is good at their job. 12 and above requires a PhD or management of large teams of people, like a regional office.
The notion that an entire office would be 15s seems ludicrous to me. I know the grades vary between agencies, and there does appear to be some grade inflation in DC due to those folks all working on national programs, but an entire office of the most senior feds possible? She must be an agency level lawyer, as that's basically the only GS job where folks routinely rise that high, and there it is only in an attempt to make their pay more competitive with their private sector counterparts.
I believe you, and that is completely different from what is going in DC, at least as far as I can see. a PhD for 12? That's insane. I just clarified with her and DW says all the "seasoned" attorneys in her office are GS15s. She is not an agency level, just a (very-good and respected) lawyer who is known to get shit done.
. From the same website I linked above. 2014 data:
Table 3: Typical education required and starting salary, by selected GS level
GS level Education level Starting salary, 2014
GS-1
No high school diploma $17,981
GS-3
High school diploma 22,058
GS-4
Associate's degree 24,763
GS-5
Bachelor's degree 27,705
GS-9
Master's degree 41,979
GS-11
Doctoral or professional degree 50,790
Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Why are there even grades above 11 then if a Phd or professional is supposed to cap at 11?
No, I think you can't even apply for Grade 11 jobs without a PhD.
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That is our experience, as well, Blonde Lawyer.
It also is notable that while raw numbers of federal civilian employees have grown over the decades, the number of civilian feds employed PER CAPITA has shrunk dramatically from its peak under Nixon (14.4 feds/1,000 U.S. citizens). The last 3 presidents have chopped the shit out of the civilian workforce, number wise, through a combination of hiring freezes and attrition.
Number of civilian employees per capita reached an all time low for the modern era under Obama: 8.5 civilian feds/1,000 U.S. citizens.
I can only speak for my office/location, but we were forced to cut 25% of our federal work force over the last 2 years....the work load has not decreased proportionately.
I'd be willing to bet there are a lot more contractor employees now. Someone has to do the work. If it moves from GS to CSS, the government can say they cut staff. It is smoke and mirrors. The public loves it so it continues. Advertising works.
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Ok I didn't read the full thread, but enough. To the OP's original question, yes my office is aware and babbles about changes in retirement benefits. we're pretty much all 'believe it when we see it' folks so it's mostly something to chat about in the break room while microwaving lunch.
As far as Federal pay scale in general, I think I'm slightly overpaid (but I appreciate it!) I just got promoted to GS-12 after 5 years as GS-11. I had to competitively bid against anyone else in the agency (or gov) who was interested in the job. I think people think you get automatic promotions but nope I had to do an interview with my current boss, resume the whole nine yards to move up one grade on station. I'm also in one of those jobs where on slow days you could replace me with an inexperienced GS-5 no problem but then on those really critical days I earn every penny of GS-12. It's like an ER doc being overpaid for a basic cold that walks in but you're glad to have 'em when its a heart attack!
My biggest complaint about the Feds is that stuff gets mandated from above and no one ever asks the folks on the bottom what we actually want or need to do our job! We're tax payers too we don't like the waste of various stuff but we're told we have to do it from on high.
Oh and for all those saying they should cut 20% congradulations, my agency IS down 20%. The problem is we're not down 20% in administrative or logistical people we're down 20% of front line day to day operations. So they've said we need to do the same thing, the same way we've been doing it, the same hours with less people. Needless to say stuff is slowly slipping between the cracks and tensions are high. I'm sure someone is going to say "good that's how the private sector does it!" but is it really? If they cut stuff would they let you change to a more streamlined operation or keep doing stuff the old way until and act of congress comes along. I'm sure big changes are coming and as an employee and tax payer I don't mind I just want to make sure my voice on the bottom is heard -that's why I'm in a federal union, to try to get my voice heard.
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On another site I follow, there is discussion about FERS isn't actually a pension. Can someone explain it to me? How does it differ from a pension?
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On another site I follow, there is discussion about FERS isn't actually a pension. Can someone explain it to me? How does it differ from a pension?
I'd have to see the argument to explain it, I think.
FERS has different "parts". A pension portion, based on years of service + age + wages. A 401k type portion (tsp). A Social Security portion. Each one is considered a leg of a three legged stool. The pension is no longer expected to replace the majority of your wages in retirement; you are now expected to use SS and fill in any gaps with money you saved/invested yourself.
So, FERS is not really a pension, but a pension is a portion of FERS.
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On another site I follow, there is discussion about FERS isn't actually a pension. Can someone explain it to me? How does it differ from a pension?
I'd have to see the argument to explain it, I think.
FERS has different "parts". A pension portion, based on years of service + age + wages. A 401k type portion (tsp). A Social Security portion. Each one is considered a leg of a three legged stool. The pension is no longer expected to replace the majority of your wages in retirement; you are now expected to use SS and fill in any gaps with money you saved/invested yourself.
So, FERS is not really a pension, but a pension is a portion of FERS.
FERS is explained pretty well above. I think the thing many people don't realize is the Federal pension system changed just over 30 years ago. The old system (CSRS) you basically got your entire salary (or very close to) for the rest of your life when you retired. Most people think it is still like that. In FERS your maximum pension is 1% of your years of service (about) so the max is around 30% of your salary. Clearly still a nice pension but also for most non mustacians not enough to live on. (assuming you are a consumer sucka who spends 100% of take home) There is a TSP (aka 401k fund) you can contribute to. Also FERS employees contribute to social security just like most other jobs (CSRS does not).
You can certainly still have an excellent retirement package if you work for a while and contribute to your TSP, however it's not the same blind years of service as the old system. At this point the only people on the old system have to have worked over 30 years already so could retire but just aren't for whatever reason.
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Most Americans take for granted the services that their government provides, because they are provided seamlessly and invisibly. Nobody notices when the lights and water just always seem to work. They assume their food is safe to eat, that the courts will review cases and that prisoners are secure, their mail gets delivered, that the Russians will not invade Alaska. We expect the internet to connect us, and our money supply be stable and respected, and our federal lands and wildlife to be there for us to visit, and our weather forecasts to be updated hourly, and our social security checks to always arrive on time.
I think you're engaging in a few distortions here. PG&E provides my power, not the government. People want safe food, but a lot of it is safe because nobody stays in business poisoning their customers. Nobody thinks the middle and lower classes get a fair deal from the courts when it costs $300-500/hr to hire a lawyer (an officer of the court) to litigate. The courts benefit the rich. No one from the middle and lower classes is ever happy about having to go to court. The Russians aren't invading, but 30 million people have come up from the Southern border so the military isn't exactly securing it. How many people are in federal prison? At a state level, prisoners are set free early all the time. My friend keeps getting his mailbox robbed by some lady the judge keeps letting out of prison. The last time I was on federal land, I found 2 abandoned pot-growing operations including large water storage tanks and abandoned deep-cell batteries within earshot of a road the federal rangers were supposed to be patrolling. The Angeles National forest and many others have huge problems of illegal drug cartel operations, dumping, and other things. The property was not large either. Sure, our social security checks should arrive early but we're taxed our entire working lives for it. The local government delivers my water, the Feds controlling the spillways have let a ton of it run into the oceans exacerbating our water shortage. The National Weather Service and NOAA are admittedly bright spots. You might blame all the bad government services on the lack of money, but federal spending has increased enormously over the past 100 years.
No one objects to government in the first place. We object to enormous, invasive, inefficient government - what we have today. But, hey, it pays your livelihood so I can see why you think it's a great thing. It's funny because if you are a Mustachian, you relentlessly cut the fat from your own budget but think the federal budget should be spent differently.
I too am waiting for you to substantiate your claim that private sector wages are up 5%.
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I see this hype in journalism all the time. Are you a scientist? I just looked on the DOE's website and found project sponsorship for stuff we were promised in Scientific American about 30 years ago. Where is it?
I agree the government has done some amazing stuff in the past. That isn't true today. You asked what I'd cut: No Americans in Space Anymore would be the first to get the axe. The rest should take about a 20% haircut or more until the public debt gets off the hockey stick.
Just because you aren't aware of it doesn't mean it's not happening. The Navy, Health and Human Services, Army, and NASA are all on the top 300 list for US patents.
I work for the Navy and get briefings on things that I'm absolutely amazed are being developed.
The reason I was oblivious though? There's no reason for a normal civilian to either know about them, or to care enough about them. Does random MMM forum poster care about 100% biodiesel jet fuel? Probably not. But it was developed and has potential uses outside the military. If commercial airlines started using it, would you ever even know?
There's a list of military technologies that have been re-appropriated for civilian use. Someone in tech, like me, is definitely aware of many of them. The thing you'll notice about most of them is that they are all old technologies. There is not much in the past several decades. Whatever we were able to accomplish before, we are much less able to accomplish now. Space travel is an example: we got to the moon in 1965; nowadays we need RUssian rockets to get us to the space station. The shuttle was an expensive boondoggle that blew up with alarming frequency given the number of missions and the original design criteria. The shuttle program has now been shut down.
WRT naval technology, I've worked in R&D, testing, and operation of naval weaponry and systems. Here too, the picture was rosy in the past but far less so now. Simple systems take decades to get out the door and then don't work or were an expensive solution to a problem that was solved better with old-fashioned means. Even some of the old-fashioned tech was better for certain applications. For obvious reasons, I cannot be specific. I remember the Osprey fiasco. The JSF is the latest. We're now buying quite a few foreign systems for our ships now. The rolling airframe missile for antiship missile defense is German. The Bofors gun on the LCS is Swedish. Were I in charge of fast jet appropriation, I'd buy Gripens. The railgun still isn't serviceable as a weapon despite decades of development. On our ship, we mostly used a civilian radar for surface search. The standard missile was removed because the last round we fired went over the mast of a nearby destroyer, under the water, back out and over our own masthead.
I've seen marketing for systems that don't pass basic back-of-the-envelop system design assumptions and no one seems to ask any questions. It's all about getting the money flowing now, not building stuff that is needed or works.
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Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Sorry folks this is entirely unrelated:
Sol can you send me the link for this one? The latest releases I've seen show overall wages up ~2.5% and real wages up about ~0.9% for the last year (not YTD). I can't find anything more specific than that.
It's household income that was up 5.2%, not wages. Data are here (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html), if you're interested.
Or you can read popular press articles about the data, like this one (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/business/economy/us-census-household-income-poverty-wealth-2015.html?mcubz=0). Or this one (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/an-end-to-stagnation-american-incomes-jump-5-2-percent/).
Some of those households contain federal employees who got a 1% raise those years, so presumably wage growth was higher among non-federal workers than it was among federal workers.
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Middle class wages are up 5.2% this year, according to the federal employees at the census bureau. The federal pay raise was 1%. Inflation was 1.3%.
Sorry folks this is entirely unrelated:
Sol can you send me the link for this one? The latest releases I've seen show overall wages up ~2.5% and real wages up about ~0.9% for the last year (not YTD). I can't find anything more specific than that.
It's household income that was up 5.2%, not wages. Data are here (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html), if you're interested.
Or you can read popular press articles about the data, like this one (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/business/economy/us-census-household-income-poverty-wealth-2015.html?mcubz=0). Or this one (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/an-end-to-stagnation-american-incomes-jump-5-2-percent/).
Some of those households contain federal employees who got a 1% raise those years, so presumably wage growth was higher among non-federal workers than it was among federal workers.
Oh boy am I glad you gave me that link. Did you notice the near decade of wage stagnation in the third fifth where the US median household wage sits?
(https://i.imgur.com/sRSiMrF.png)
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A few non-nasty (I hope) comments:
- I think any changes should be grandfathered. People reasonably expect the benefits they were promised. I do think they often seem overly generous, though.
- My BIL was in the military for about 24 years. He retired at 46/47. I was surprised to learn that his pension, starting immediately, is $5k monthly. For life. Not sure about adjustments for inflation. One valuation using 4% rule would value it at $1.5M. I'd say more since he'll likely collect for more than 30 years. Also, just learned that he and my sis get medical for life.....not sure what sort of premium they have to pay if any. His total comp was probably around 130-140k including salary and allowances (housing alone was about 25k per year). I don't complain since they dragged him all over the world for a quarter of century. But, it taint bad dough.
- A good friend and one of the smartest people I know started working for the Fed a couple years ago. He could make more in industry, but, according to him, it's low stress and somewhat interesting. It's not a bad gig for scientists and engineers. I might encourage a young person to check out the fed for roles like that.
- I do wonder about people expecting pensions as state employees in places like Illinois, etc. when IL cannot print money like the Fed to cover it's debts. Some of those people are going to be screwed.
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Most Americans take for granted the services that their government provides, because they are provided seamlessly and invisibly. Nobody notices when the lights and water just always seem to work. They assume their food is safe to eat, that the courts will review cases and that prisoners are secure, their mail gets delivered, that the Russians will not invade Alaska. We expect the internet to connect us, and our money supply be stable and respected, and our federal lands and wildlife to be there for us to visit, and our weather forecasts to be updated hourly, and our social security checks to always arrive on time.
I think you're engaging in a few distortions here. PG&E provides my power, not the government.
This will depend on where you live. If you live in the Northwest (not sure about other regions), there is a chance that a huge portion of your power is provided by the government. Generated at a hydroelectric dam (most are ran by the DoD (Corps of Engineers), or the Bureau of Reclamation), then that power is sent to a grid ran by BPA (Bonneville Power Administration, also a federal agency), and then it finally reaches the utility company, which distributes it to households. So, the government is providing the power, the utility just delivers it.
Since the government agencies can't make a profit, the "extra money" is put back into upgrades, maintenance, etc. Still not a perfect system by any means, but many don't realize that the generation and grid really are federal government ran.
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A few non-nasty (I hope) comments:
- I think any changes should be grandfathered. People reasonably expect the benefits they were promised. I do think they often seem overly generous, though.
- My BIL was in the military for about 24 years. He retired at 46/47. I was surprised to learn that his pension, starting immediately, is $5k monthly. For life. Not sure about adjustments for inflation. One valuation using 4% rule would value it at $1.5M. I'd say more since he'll likely collect for more than 30 years. Also, just learned that he and my sis get medical for life.....not sure what sort of premium they have to pay if any. His total comp was probably around 130-140k including salary and allowances (housing alone was about 25k per year). I don't complain since they dragged him all over the world for a quarter of century. But, it taint bad dough.
- A good friend and one of the smartest people I know started working for the Fed a couple years ago. He could make more in industry, but, according to him, it's low stress and somewhat interesting. It's not a bad gig for scientists and engineers. I might encourage a young person to check out the fed for roles like that.
- I do wonder about people expecting pensions as state employees in places like Illinois, etc. when IL cannot print money like the Fed to cover it's debts. Some of those people are going to be screwed.
Sounds like your BIL was an officer. Enlisted get quite a bit less (an E6 with 20 years in get about $3800/month hase pay and an O6 with 20 gets over $10k/month). I believe retiree benefits are half of base pay. But in any case military pensions and medical benefits are awesome and you can get them young if you do your 20 years of service. However you do have to do 20 years or you get nothing unless you put in $$,into a TSP.
I'm on CalPERS and expect to get a cut to my pension - which isn't big since I quit work at 42 but, like the Fed LEO pension, my state LEO/Public Safety pension allows me to begin collecting at 50 unlike regular state pensions which start at 55 or older.
ETA Calif has since changed their pension for all new hires so older age to get pension and more contributions towards pension and retiree medical. Personally that's how changes should be made rather than takevaway or reduce already promised benefits to current employees and retirees.
Yes, O6...Colonel. He studied mechanical engineering. While his initial pay would have started higher in industry, I think the overall outcome is better for him than if he'd chosen industry......based on personality, financial awareness, etc. It is very doubtful that he would have amassed a nest egg providing 60k/year. Entrepreneurial guys, yep, but for him, this was the better deal.
Agree with last point. And, I think that's how it will go for SS.....keep raising the income level for contributions (now, almost 130k) and raise the so-called full retirement age.
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Most Americans take for granted the services that their government provides, because they are provided seamlessly and invisibly. Nobody notices when the lights and water just always seem to work. They assume their food is safe to eat, that the courts will review cases and that prisoners are secure, their mail gets delivered, that the Russians will not invade Alaska. We expect the internet to connect us, and our money supply be stable and respected, and our federal lands and wildlife to be there for us to visit, and our weather forecasts to be updated hourly, and our social security checks to always arrive on time.
I think you're engaging in a few distortions here. PG&E provides my power, not the government. People want safe food, but a lot of it is safe because nobody stays in business poisoning their customers. Nobody thinks the middle and lower classes get a fair deal from the courts when it costs $300-500/hr to hire a lawyer (an officer of the court) to litigate. The courts benefit the rich. No one from the middle and lower classes is ever happy about having to go to court. The Russians aren't invading, but 30 million people have come up from the Southern border so the military isn't exactly securing it. How many people are in federal prison? At a state level, prisoners are set free early all the time. My friend keeps getting his mailbox robbed by some lady the judge keeps letting out of prison. The last time I was on federal land, I found 2 abandoned pot-growing operations including large water storage tanks and abandoned deep-cell batteries within earshot of a road the federal rangers were supposed to be patrolling. The Angeles National forest and many others have huge problems of illegal drug cartel operations, dumping, and other things. The property was not large either. Sure, our social security checks should arrive early but we're taxed our entire working lives for it. The local government delivers my water, the Feds controlling the spillways have let a ton of it run into the oceans exacerbating our water shortage. The National Weather Service and NOAA are admittedly bright spots. You might blame all the bad government services on the lack of money, but federal spending has increased enormously over the past 100 years.
No one objects to government in the first place. We object to enormous, invasive, inefficient government - what we have today. But, hey, it pays your livelihood so I can see why you think it's a great thing. It's funny because if you are a Mustachian, you relentlessly cut the fat from your own budget but think the federal budget should be spent differently.
I too am waiting for you to substantiate your claim that private sector wages are up 5%.
Do you not see the contradiction in what you've posted there? The reason the Forest Service can't adequately patrol their land and root out the drug cartels is because they are being starved for funds and can't hire enough officers to patrol everything that needs to be patrolled. Total budgets at most non-defense, non-homeland security agencies have been flat or down for years. Compound that with the fact that an ever-increasing share of the Forest Service's budget goes toward fighting wildfires that get relentlessly worse year after year (thanks to climate change), and what you get is an agency that can no longer keep up with its core mission. This is not "inefficiency," it's the simple fact that you can't adequately patrol millions of acres of land with a handful of guys (and gals).
It's been pointed out before in this thread, but it bears repeating. You are ignoring the fact that the "big" part of government (entitlements and military) has nothing to do with the part of government that is being starved to death. You're looking at the total size of government spending, and then berating the tiny slice of the pie that has gotten squeezed to the point that it can't do its job properly. The bad outcomes you are bemoaning are the direct result of decades of efforts to make government "smaller" and "more efficient."
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy, especially if they owed as much as they take in wages and salaries. Yet you Fed workers - there seem to be a ton on this board - can't imagine any cuts in public spending.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity. THe American people can't keep voting themselves Congressmen who reward them more entitlements for their votes. The bread and circuses have to be curtailed. History books have a lot to say about this.
Here's a start for how to cut back the budget:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/plan-to-cut-federal-spending
Personally, I'd make much larger cuts in DoD operations and maintenance spending. This would involve bringing troops home, ending foreign misadventures, and closing many of our overseas installations. To the extent that foreigners need protection from our military, they can buy guns and learn how to use them and defend themselves. I'd end HUD completely. And NASA. That'd save close to another $100 billion. The surveillance state - the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc, etc, etc - needs to be consolidated and much of it shut down. The Air Force will have to be re-absorbed into the Army Air Corps like in WWII. The army can be re-organized into some sort of regimental system like the Swiss have using the national guard. Men will keep their weapons at home and know where to muster should the Russians invade Alaska as Sol fears.
Going by the pie charts I saw on the CBO, federal employment is only a small slice of our spending. The good news is that you can all keep your jobs but will have to do more with less just like the private sector. Some of the contractors may have to go. The Fed contractor down the street who works for USAID said they got a large budget increase over the past couple of years. He said their annual party in DC (a very expensive place to have a party) was a "debauch." That suggests another place fat can be trimmed.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough. It has to be done. Again, the lessons from history are clear.
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy
Have you ever taken an econ course? It might explain to you how governments are financed with low interest debt, in order to promote economic growth higher than the interest. This is how America has succeeded in the world.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity.
They only grow to infinity as the economy and population grow to infinity. As long the country is still growing, federal spending has to grow along with it. You can argue that it should grow more slowly than the economy as a whole, which is a fine goal, but then you might want to read up Keynesian economics and the role of federal spending in stabilizing an inherently unstable business cycle. Sometimes, debt has to grow in order to save all of those private businesses. See TARP, for example.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough.
Would you PLEASE stop calling my wife a pig. It's starting to upset me.
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People signed on with certain benefits. Many have contributed to that system for years. I don't believe it's right, in the public *or* private sector for the employer to back out on agreements. To change the rules for new-hires? Sure. They are signing on with their own agreement; don't change mine.
If someone said "you have to cut 20% of your positions, and I'm going to select which ones, having no clue what any of you really do", that would be asinine. If I, knowing what we do, who is skilled, knowledgeable, and adds value, could get rid of the 20% that I know is a complete waste, I'd be fine with that. But that's not how it works.
I've never been a fan of punishing an entire group when actually removing the "bad people" would be a much better solution. I'm also not a fan of going back on your word, or written agreement.
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People signed on with certain benefits. Many have contributed to that system for years. I don't believe it's right, in the public *or* private sector for the employer to back out on agreements. To change the rules for new-hires? Sure. They are signing on with their own agreement; don't change mine.
If someone said "you have to cut 20% of your positions, and I'm going to select which ones, having no clue what any of you really do", that would be asinine. If I, knowing what we do, who is skilled, knowledgeable, and adds value, could get rid of the 20% that I know is a complete waste, I'd be fine with that. But that's not how it works.
I've never been a fan of punishing an entire group when actually removing the "bad people" would be a much better solution. I'm also not a fan of going back on your word, or written agreement.
THIS.
I a am taxpayer. I'd be happy to see a cut in Federal spending. But rather than Congress in washington deciding how to make it more efficent have you tried actually asking the people who do the work??? We've got so much rules and red tape. You pay someone 30min pay to do the paperwork to buy some basic tools that cost less than the 30 min pay. Just trust the people on the bottom. If we say we need a new widget (low cost) let us buy it. Yes I'm sure someone will abuse the privledge - fire them! Dont' make the rest of us fill out extra paperwork and approvals just fire the bad egg and move on.
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy, especially if they owed as much as they take in wages and salaries. Yet you Fed workers - there seem to be a ton on this board - can't imagine any cuts in public spending.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity. THe American people can't keep voting themselves Congressmen who reward them more entitlements for their votes. The bread and circuses have to be curtailed. History books have a lot to say about this.
Here's a start for how to cut back the budget:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/plan-to-cut-federal-spending
Personally, I'd make much larger cuts in DoD operations and maintenance spending. This would involve bringing troops home, ending foreign misadventures, and closing many of our overseas installations. To the extent that foreigners need protection from our military, they can buy guns and learn how to use them and defend themselves. I'd end HUD completely. And NASA. That'd save close to another $100 billion. The surveillance state - the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc, etc, etc - needs to be consolidated and much of it shut down. The Air Force will have to be re-absorbed into the Army Air Corps like in WWII. The army can be re-organized into some sort of regimental system like the Swiss have using the national guard. Men will keep their weapons at home and know where to muster should the Russians invade Alaska as Sol fears.
Going by the pie charts I saw on the CBO, federal employment is only a small slice of our spending. The good news is that you can all keep your jobs but will have to do more with less just like the private sector. Some of the contractors may have to go. The Fed contractor down the street who works for USAID said they got a large budget increase over the past couple of years. He said their annual party in DC (a very expensive place to have a party) was a "debauch." That suggests another place fat can be trimmed.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough. It has to be done. Again, the lessons from history are clear.
Boy, you really have all the answers, don't you? Just wave your hand, cut this, cut that, simple as can be. Never mind the details or the consequences. Reading a bunch of alt-right websites does not make you an expert on public policy.
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy, especially if they owed as much as they take in wages and salaries. Yet you Fed workers - there seem to be a ton on this board - can't imagine any cuts in public spending.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity. THe American people can't keep voting themselves Congressmen who reward them more entitlements for their votes. The bread and circuses have to be curtailed. History books have a lot to say about this.
Here's a start for how to cut back the budget:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/plan-to-cut-federal-spending
Personally, I'd make much larger cuts in DoD operations and maintenance spending. This would involve bringing troops home, ending foreign misadventures, and closing many of our overseas installations. To the extent that foreigners need protection from our military, they can buy guns and learn how to use them and defend themselves. I'd end HUD completely. And NASA. That'd save close to another $100 billion. The surveillance state - the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc, etc, etc - needs to be consolidated and much of it shut down. The Air Force will have to be re-absorbed into the Army Air Corps like in WWII. The army can be re-organized into some sort of regimental system like the Swiss have using the national guard. Men will keep their weapons at home and know where to muster should the Russians invade Alaska as Sol fears.
Going by the pie charts I saw on the CBO, federal employment is only a small slice of our spending. The good news is that you can all keep your jobs but will have to do more with less just like the private sector. Some of the contractors may have to go. The Fed contractor down the street who works for USAID said they got a large budget increase over the past couple of years. He said their annual party in DC (a very expensive place to have a party) was a "debauch." That suggests another place fat can be trimmed.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough. It has to be done. Again, the lessons from history are clear.
Boy, you really have all the answers, don't you? Just wave your hand, cut this, cut that, simple as can be. Never mind the details or the consequences. Reading a bunch of alt-right websites does not make you an expert on public policy.
I gave up on this guy two pages ago. His repeated assertion that he could generalize all government workers as overpaid, lazy, do-nothing slobs did it for me.
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Anyone who believes federal employees are overpaid is welcome to seek federal employment. DC is a cesspool because of all the private money seeking to corrupt our federal workforce, and honestly I'm surprised we don't routinely see examples of graft and corruption in DC given how underpaid those people are. There is a reason we have (well, HAD before Trump) restrictions on the revolving door between federal and lobbyist jobs.
We are arguing over a subjective measure, but I'll maintain that the benefits package is pretty rich. Like I said in my earlier post, a federal pension for GS15 or higher employees is worth *millions* of dollars, on top of the excellent TSP, excellent health care, excellent time off, excellent work life balance. In 3 years time my wife will get a full day (in addition to sick time) off every two weeks. That accrues without limit. It's not unheard of for people to retire from the government and get 12-24 months of pay as a parting gift.
I would easily try to get a federal job if I could stand the shit-show that software development is at the federal level. I'm not making it up; I've seen it first hand, it's just awful.
Edit, I just read the federal employees are now capped on their annual leave accrual. Never mind about that part.
Pretty much everyone at my former job retires at a GS-15 or above. I mean, I suppose some don't make it past a 14? But I doubt it. I remember attending the retirement party 20 years ago of someone who was there 40 years. He did, quite literally, get paid for 2 years after because of accrued vacation and sick time.
I am sometime jealous, but really don't want to deal with DC traffic anymore, one of the reasons I left 20 years ago.
GS-15 or above? So you mean to tell me that everyone becomes a manager or is in the SES at your old workplace? I would have never guessed that such was possible.
Our workforce of 9,000 Attorneys, Engineers, Scientists has very few that ever reach GS-15 and maybe 40 total SES???
Achieving GS-14 is reasonable in our agency, but not easy. However, it isn't competitive either (everyone can get a GS-14 slot if they are willing to go through the 2 years of hell to get there).
This is a highly specialized area that requires specific education and training.
Though I've been gone 20 years now (so things may have changed a bit), for decades the *only* way you could get a job there is to come in through the military. High level interviews as a senior in college, get chosen, come in, do your training, spend your 5 years as an officer, transition to civilian as a GS-13. I seem to remember it taking 8-10 years for the first people to make GS-14. (That's total time, military + civilian, and those were the superstars).
Also, there's no guarantee that you can stay after your military time. It depends on the budget, and the number of retirements. Only about 5-10% would be chosen to stay each year. So, some years, more people would want to stay than there was room for. Around the time that I got out (mid to late 90s), the job market outside was pretty good, so most people opted to leave and go back to school or get a job. There were several years around then where they lost most people. Back then they would get 15-25 new officers each year, but at the end of the commitment, only 1-3 would stay.
There are a specific # of SES positions at the organization (don't remember how many), and same with GS-15. I guess some people never make it past 14, but remember that every year you get an influx of new military officers, and every year the people at 4-6 years get out, so it's fairly bottom-heavy.
It's also the national HQ for the organization.
Like I said, things have changed. I heard a rumor about 10 years ago that so many people retired in the early 2000's (we hired and kept a lot of people during the cold war maybe?) that they actually opened up positions to lateral transfers from other similar government organizations. (Still, the preference was people who had at least worked there in the past. I got a Christmas card one year, 10-12 years after getting out "want to come back? We need people!"
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the OPM is not quite right. At least in my office, master level people are at 11 and 13 depending on job description, and PhD at 13, with some at 14 or 15 depending on whether they are the head of grants, and head of the department. What that means financially can be looked up on a government website re: salary.
You can go onto USA jobs and search by GS level to get an idea for the type of experience one has to have for each level.
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They only grow to infinity as the economy and population grow to infinity. As long the country is still growing, federal spending has to grow along with it. You can argue that it should grow more slowly than the economy as a whole, which is a fine goal, but then you might want to read up Keynesian economics and the role of federal spending in stabilizing an inherently unstable business cycle. Sometimes, debt has to grow in order to save all of those private businesses. See TARP, for example.
As a percentage of GDP, federal spending has grown from 3% to 25% in 100 years. Wages for the bottom 3/5ths of the earners have stagnated anywhere from 7-20 of the last 30 years or more based on the data you linked earlier. How is government spending helping the bottom 3/5ths? You might argue that they're getting more subsidies. This may be true. You haven't proven it. The middle fifth doesn't qualify for much in the way of subsidies until just recently with the ACA. As you'll note from the data, the upper 2/5ths of wage earners have been getting richer, especially billionaires. One could argue that their growth in wealth is positively correlated with government spending. Perhaps they're getting good at privatizing their profits and socializing their costs.
In "THe Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith argued that the best economic policy for nations was good household economic policy scaled-up. So, if saving money and reducing spending are good policies for the family - and this forum proves that they are - so are they for the nation.
YOu mentioned Keynes. Keynes made his money as an equities trader. He was the guy who came up with "Castles in the Air" theory of equity valuation. He was the first to write a modern macroeconomic synthesis which is probably why he's famous. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he say the government could deficit spend in bad times but then CUT BACK on spending during good times? When do we ever cut back? Were he alive today, I very much doubt he would say that it was good for any government to deficit spend year-in and year-out and rack-up as much debt as GDP. The only reason we can do this is because of fiat currency. Keynes died in 1946 before fiat currency was a thing. No one knows how it will end. The growth of fiat currency was supposed to be tethered to the growth in productivity of an economy, not used to smooth out business cycles or to offset congressional deficit spending forever.
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy, especially if they owed as much as they take in wages and salaries. Yet you Fed workers - there seem to be a ton on this board - can't imagine any cuts in public spending.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity. THe American people can't keep voting themselves Congressmen who reward them more entitlements for their votes. The bread and circuses have to be curtailed. History books have a lot to say about this.
Here's a start for how to cut back the budget:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/plan-to-cut-federal-spending
Personally, I'd make much larger cuts in DoD operations and maintenance spending. This would involve bringing troops home, ending foreign misadventures, and closing many of our overseas installations. To the extent that foreigners need protection from our military, they can buy guns and learn how to use them and defend themselves. I'd end HUD completely. And NASA. That'd save close to another $100 billion. The surveillance state - the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc, etc, etc - needs to be consolidated and much of it shut down. The Air Force will have to be re-absorbed into the Army Air Corps like in WWII. The army can be re-organized into some sort of regimental system like the Swiss have using the national guard. Men will keep their weapons at home and know where to muster should the Russians invade Alaska as Sol fears.
Going by the pie charts I saw on the CBO, federal employment is only a small slice of our spending. The good news is that you can all keep your jobs but will have to do more with less just like the private sector. Some of the contractors may have to go. The Fed contractor down the street who works for USAID said they got a large budget increase over the past couple of years. He said their annual party in DC (a very expensive place to have a party) was a "debauch." That suggests another place fat can be trimmed.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough. It has to be done. Again, the lessons from history are clear.
Boy, you really have all the answers, don't you? Just wave your hand, cut this, cut that, simple as can be. Never mind the details or the consequences. Reading a bunch of alt-right websites does not make you an expert on public policy.
What is an 'expert?' Someone with credentials? I'd argue it's someone good at getting results according to agreed-upon metrics.
What do you think should be done?
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy, especially if they owed as much as they take in wages and salaries. Yet you Fed workers - there seem to be a ton on this board - can't imagine any cuts in public spending.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity. THe American people can't keep voting themselves Congressmen who reward them more entitlements for their votes. The bread and circuses have to be curtailed. History books have a lot to say about this.
Here's a start for how to cut back the budget:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/plan-to-cut-federal-spending
Personally, I'd make much larger cuts in DoD operations and maintenance spending. This would involve bringing troops home, ending foreign misadventures, and closing many of our overseas installations. To the extent that foreigners need protection from our military, they can buy guns and learn how to use them and defend themselves. I'd end HUD completely. And NASA. That'd save close to another $100 billion. The surveillance state - the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc, etc, etc - needs to be consolidated and much of it shut down. The Air Force will have to be re-absorbed into the Army Air Corps like in WWII. The army can be re-organized into some sort of regimental system like the Swiss have using the national guard. Men will keep their weapons at home and know where to muster should the Russians invade Alaska as Sol fears.
Going by the pie charts I saw on the CBO, federal employment is only a small slice of our spending. The good news is that you can all keep your jobs but will have to do more with less just like the private sector. Some of the contractors may have to go. The Fed contractor down the street who works for USAID said they got a large budget increase over the past couple of years. He said their annual party in DC (a very expensive place to have a party) was a "debauch." That suggests another place fat can be trimmed.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough. It has to be done. Again, the lessons from history are clear.
Boy, you really have all the answers, don't you? Just wave your hand, cut this, cut that, simple as can be. Never mind the details or the consequences. Reading a bunch of alt-right websites does not make you an expert on public policy.
What is an 'expert?' Someone with credentials? I'd argue it's someone good at getting results according to agreed-upon metrics.
What do you think should be done?
Lance, I think you have already been asked this before and dodged the question. Why did you choose not to work in government? I know you replied that the solution isn't everyone work in government. We can't have have 100% public jobs and no private sector. I agree with you on this. But, at some point, you made a career decision to pursue the private sector instead of the public sector. You seem to believe there are better salary and benefit options in government. Why did you personally choose not to pursue those?
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If someone came on here complaining about money and posted several years of their budget showing increasing revenues and increasing spending, it'd be facepunch worthy, especially if they owed as much as they take in wages and salaries. Yet you Fed workers - there seem to be a ton on this board - can't imagine any cuts in public spending.
Obviously entitlements will have to be cut. They can't grow to infinity. THe American people can't keep voting themselves Congressmen who reward them more entitlements for their votes. The bread and circuses have to be curtailed. History books have a lot to say about this.
Here's a start for how to cut back the budget:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/plan-to-cut-federal-spending
Personally, I'd make much larger cuts in DoD operations and maintenance spending. This would involve bringing troops home, ending foreign misadventures, and closing many of our overseas installations. To the extent that foreigners need protection from our military, they can buy guns and learn how to use them and defend themselves. I'd end HUD completely. And NASA. That'd save close to another $100 billion. The surveillance state - the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc, etc, etc - needs to be consolidated and much of it shut down. The Air Force will have to be re-absorbed into the Army Air Corps like in WWII. The army can be re-organized into some sort of regimental system like the Swiss have using the national guard. Men will keep their weapons at home and know where to muster should the Russians invade Alaska as Sol fears.
Going by the pie charts I saw on the CBO, federal employment is only a small slice of our spending. The good news is that you can all keep your jobs but will have to do more with less just like the private sector. Some of the contractors may have to go. The Fed contractor down the street who works for USAID said they got a large budget increase over the past couple of years. He said their annual party in DC (a very expensive place to have a party) was a "debauch." That suggests another place fat can be trimmed.
You all say it's hard, but it's not hard. It's painful because there are a lot of pigs feeding at the trough. It has to be done. Again, the lessons from history are clear.
Boy, you really have all the answers, don't you? Just wave your hand, cut this, cut that, simple as can be. Never mind the details or the consequences. Reading a bunch of alt-right websites does not make you an expert on public policy.
What is an 'expert?' Someone with credentials? I'd argue it's someone good at getting results according to agreed-upon metrics.
What do you think should be done?
I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
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The new house bill absolutely brutalizes federal retirees: https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to-advance-2018-budget-resolution-with-federal-retirement-cuts/
It ends federal pensions for new hires, switching them to TSP-only. It raises contribution rates (again) for current employees. It cuts retiree healthcare, even for people currently retired. It cuts the G fund. It ends the FERS supplement.
This has all been lumped in with the House's current budget reconciliation bill, which is expected to pass. At that point only the (Republican controlled) Senate can stop any of this from becoming law. Mostly I just can't believe they're actually going to vote for literally ending federal pensions, after 200+ years.
We live in exciting times.
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The new house bill absolutely brutalizes federal retirees: https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to-advance-2018-budget-resolution-with-federal-retirement-cuts/
It ends federal pensions for new hires, switching them to TSP-only. It raises contribution rates (again) for current employees. It cuts retiree healthcare, even for people currently retired. It cuts the G fund. It ends the FERS supplement.
This has all been lumped in with the House's current budget reconciliation bill, which is expected to pass. At that point only the (Republican controlled) Senate can stop any of this from becoming law. Mostly I just can't believe they're actually going to vote for literally ending federal pensions, after 200+ years.
We live in exciting times.
While this is indeed concerning, it's important to remember that it is a non-binding budget resolution. It is not the actual spending bill(s) that will make the actual cuts. And it is widely expected that the Senate's version of the budget resolution will be different.
Still, it pays to be vigilant. The resolution is a clear indication of where the republican majority stands. It is very easy to slip these cuts into the actual spending bills because the public tends not to care about federal pensions they way they care about, say, health care. The last round of cuts to federal retirement happened under a Democratic president. Such cuts become an easy compromise point for Democrats so that they can get some concessions on issues they really care about. As long as all the D reps from Maryland and Northern Virginia vote against the cuts, the rest don't really face any blowback.
None of the changes mentioned would really affect you and me, since we are both planning to pull the rip cord next year anyway. But they would seriously suck for people who were planning on making a full career out of government service.
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Well I need to work for another 10 years (yes I'm not a full mustachian) and I have 2 dependents. I work here not because the pay is the highest I can get with my experience and qualifications, but it allows me to be a working parent.
I'm pretty tired when federal employees are the traditional kicking boy for politicians. Out of one mouth they say they support veterans and want to make sure they have the best care. Out of the other side they are planning to cut compensation and actual jobs so there is a brain and experience drain out of Veterans affairs.
I don't think the Republican party will have a "come to Jesus" moment, until the point they realize they have by their policies, decimated the middle class (and the people actually buying things).
I believe this is done for the primary reason some politicians truly do not "believe" in government. Cutting wages and compensation not only allows them to cut the budget (so there is room for more tax cuts for the wealthy) but it allows them to say when natural consequences happen, that see, the federal government doesn't work, therefore we need to cut more and or privatize it. And I'm sure the politicians of course will have no influence or benefit from who receives the contracts (wink wink, nod, nod).
Here is your creepy quote for the day
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.' Grover Norquist
And to lighten the mood another quote from him
"An armed people are a free people. If our forefathers were not armed before the American Revolution we would all be speaking English today."
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Oh boy am I glad you gave me that link. Did you notice the near decade of wage stagnation in the third fifth where the US median household wage sits?
(https://i.imgur.com/sRSiMrF.png)
I calulated the numbers for each Quintile for those 7 years.
The average yearly increase for,
Lowest Fifth ---0.17%
Second Fifth ---0.4%
Third Fifth -----0.8%
Fourth Fifth ----0.7%
Highest Fifth ---1.1%
The lower 4/5s all had a low growth of income for those 7 years.
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The new house bill absolutely brutalizes federal retirees: https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to-advance-2018-budget-resolution-with-federal-retirement-cuts/
It ends federal pensions for new hires, switching them to TSP-only. It raises contribution rates (again) for current employees. It cuts retiree healthcare, even for people currently retired. It cuts the G fund. It ends the FERS supplement.
This has all been lumped in with the House's current budget reconciliation bill, which is expected to pass. At that point only the (Republican controlled) Senate can stop any of this from becoming law. Mostly I just can't believe they're actually going to vote for literally ending federal pensions, after 200+ years.
We live in exciting times.
Does that include Congress themselves? Wait, do Congressmen get any kind of pension?
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The new house bill absolutely brutalizes federal retirees: https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to-advance-2018-budget-resolution-with-federal-retirement-cuts/
It ends federal pensions for new hires, switching them to TSP-only. It raises contribution rates (again) for current employees. It cuts retiree healthcare, even for people currently retired. It cuts the G fund. It ends the FERS supplement.
This has all been lumped in with the House's current budget reconciliation bill, which is expected to pass. At that point only the (Republican controlled) Senate can stop any of this from becoming law. Mostly I just can't believe they're actually going to vote for literally ending federal pensions, after 200+ years.
We live in exciting times.
I guess a positive spin on the proposed changes is that it would likely spur me to FIRE, rather than simply work as an FI-Fed. I like my job (partly for the benefits) and plan on working until 57 (with some healthy doses of 27 days of LWOP lumped in), but if there is a dramatic shift in quality of benefits I'll probably just work a couple more years and then bail. The industry I work in (oil & gas) typically offers excellent benefits and much higher pay (roughly double what I make now), but is extremely cyclical and after dooddlebugging around for 6.5 years I'd made enough money to value the slower pace of government over the much higher salaries in the private sector.
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It's clear that the typical federal employee is overpaid significantly. If you have a professional degree or a PhD (i.e., lawyers and scientists) then yes, you are likely paid less than you could get in the private sector. However, that doesn't include the value of things like job security and worklife balance which are likely much better than in the private sector.
From the CBO:
Among workers whose education culminated in a bachelor’s degree, the cost of total compensation averaged 21 percent more for federal workers than for similar workers in the private sector.
Among workers with a high school diploma or less education, total compensation costs averaged 53 percent more for federal employees than for their private-sector counterparts.
Total compensation costs among workers with a professional degree or doctorate, by contrast, were 18 percent lower for federal employees than for similar private-sector employees, on average.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52637
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Lance, I think you have already been asked this before and dodged the question. Why did you choose not to work in government? I know you replied that the solution isn't everyone work in government. We can't have have 100% public jobs and no private sector. I agree with you on this. But, at some point, you made a career decision to pursue the private sector instead of the public sector. You seem to believe there are better salary and benefit options in government. Why did you personally choose not to pursue those?
Read my explanation on page one.
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It's clear that the typical federal employee is overpaid significantly. If you have a professional degree or a PhD (i.e., lawyers and scientists) then yes, you are likely paid less than you could get in the private sector. However, that doesn't include the value of things like job security and worklife balance which are likely much better than in the private sector.
From the CBO:
Among workers whose education culminated in a bachelor’s degree, the cost of total compensation averaged 21 percent more for federal workers than for similar workers in the private sector.
Among workers with a high school diploma or less education, total compensation costs averaged 53 percent more for federal employees than for their private-sector counterparts.
Total compensation costs among workers with a professional degree or doctorate, by contrast, were 18 percent lower for federal employees than for similar private-sector employees, on average.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52637
Dig deeper to get a more nuanced picture of what you read.
1. 60% of all federal government employees have a Bachelor's degree or higher. Therefore only 40% have less than a Bachelors (Associates, High School Diploma or less).
2. Nearly 47% of all federal government employees are Military. I suspect, the majority of those working for the govt who don't have at least a Bachelors will be found in the Armed Forces as 16.5% of the armed forces are officers and enlisted tend to lack college education in general yielding as much as 39.25% of the non-bachelor's degree holders in the federal govt.)
3. 16% of all federal government jobs are "government enterprise" and are self funded.
I conclude, that you are mainly speaking about the military enlisted members being overpaid and over compensated when you highlight those with only a High School education having much higher total compensation than the private work force.
It would be interesting to tease out the Bachelor's degree numbers without military officers and see if the total compensation is still as high. Not too many officers stay a 2nd LT or 1st LT for long (O-1 and O-2 ranks that are the main low compensation ranks as a military officer).
I have an acquaintance who is an E-8 in the military with 19 years time in service, a high school education, and when BAH + BAS + Base Pay + tax savings on BAH&BAS is calculated together their compensation is equivalent to around $80,000/yr.
Dig still deeper and you'll find that the military employs a lot of people with only a high school education who have technical training (A-school rating, MOS training, etc). These jobs tend to pay better than most college degrees. Also, the government employs a lot of people with humanities degrees that pay very low in the private sector. The stories of art majors working at Starbucks are of course legion.
The self-funded government employees should have the highest upside for pay, IMO.
The mindset of the Feds on here is completely the opposite of the private sector. You guys base your advancement opportunities on educational credentials rather than skillsets or results. Our CEO has a bachelor's degree. I never asked the black-belt ME I worked with last week what letters were after his last name. He could be a HS dropout for all I care, his results were amazing. Steve Jobs dropped out of college.
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Oh boy am I glad you gave me that link. Did you notice the near decade of wage stagnation in the third fifth where the US median household wage sits?
(https://i.imgur.com/sRSiMrF.png)
I calulated the numbers for each Quintile for those 7 years.
The average yearly increase for,
Lowest Fifth ---0.17%
Second Fifth ---0.4%
Third Fifth -----0.8%
Fourth Fifth ----0.7%
Highest Fifth ---1.1%
The lower 4/5s all had a low growth of income for those 7 years.
Right, and you'll notice the bottom 2/5s have had stagnant wages for most of the past 20 years. But the Feds on here are complaining about their gibsmedats. "NEW HIRES WON'T EVEN GET A PENSION!" Pensions disappeared in the private sector 30 years ago or earlier.
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
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i know we have moved on- but with the chart with the grade levels and education- that is education substitution for entering - so you have to have experience OR education to enter an occupation. So someone with a BA, can often start at the GS-5 (with no other work experience), there is a provision if you have superior academic achievement (which is basically a 3.0 GPA), you can start as a 7. Masters lets you start as a 9 (in a related field).
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Could anyone please write a good solid 30 second or less script for us to call our senators?
I'm thinking something along the lines of "please vote no on any budget which breaks the promises we made to our current Federal workforce and retirees".
The more people calling and leaving a message on their staff voicemail, the more likely we are to get enough "no" votes on the budget as it stands.
After reading this thread, I get the idea the majority here would want our senators to vote yes. The hardworking taxpayers have had our promise of SS at 65 taken away, and the File and suspend is gone.
I have had 12 increases in the FICA tax during my work career, with only an inflation adjustment, an not increase in the benefit.
Maybe we need a poll!
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Could anyone please write a good solid 30 second or less script for us to call our senators?
I'm thinking something along the lines of "please vote no on any budget which breaks the promises we made to our current Federal workforce and retirees".
The more people calling and leaving a message on their staff voicemail, the more likely we are to get enough "no" votes on the budget as it stands.
After reading this thread, I get the idea the majority here would want our senators to vote yes. The hardworking taxpayers have had our promise of SS at 65 taken away, and the File and suspend is gone.
I have had 12 increases in the FICA tax during my work career, with only an inflation adjustment, an not increase in the benefit.
Maybe we need a poll!
Not quite sure what you mean? Feds also pay taxes and also pay into SS and are subject to the same SS rules.
ETA, I think to have accurate polling responses from the feds themselves, you would have to get extremely granular. Some want no changes, some (like me) would be fine with high 5 versus high 3 pension calculations, or would be fine with paying more into the pension if it were stepped in gradually enough, but would lobby hard against e.g. chained CPI inflation adjustment, etc. Others would have differing opinions on what would be reasonable to change. It's not an all or nothing sort of question to most feds.
ETA again, By "the majority here would vote yes", do you mean the majority of feds on this thread? That is, after all, who the OP asked to respond.
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Are any Fed workers considering a change in employment if the increased contributions go thru?
As Sol has mentioned, required increased pension contributions is really painful for people working towards FIRE...
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Are any Fed workers considering a change in employment if the increased contributions go thru?
As Sol has mentioned, required increased pension contributions is really painful for people working towards FIRE...
Yes, I'm planning to FIRE. Of course, I'm planning to do that either way...
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
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It's clear that the typical federal employee is overpaid significantly. If you have a professional degree or a PhD (i.e., lawyers and scientists) then yes, you are likely paid less than you could get in the private sector. However, that doesn't include the value of things like job security and worklife balance which are likely much better than in the private sector.
From the CBO:
Among workers whose education culminated in a bachelor’s degree, the cost of total compensation averaged 21 percent more for federal workers than for similar workers in the private sector.
Among workers with a high school diploma or less education, total compensation costs averaged 53 percent more for federal employees than for their private-sector counterparts.
Total compensation costs among workers with a professional degree or doctorate, by contrast, were 18 percent lower for federal employees than for similar private-sector employees, on average.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52637
Dig deeper to get a more nuanced picture of what you read.
1. 60% of all federal government employees have a Bachelor's degree or higher. Therefore only 40% have less than a Bachelors (Associates, High School Diploma or less).
2. Nearly 47% of all federal government employees are Military. I suspect, the majority of those working for the govt who don't have at least a Bachelors will be found in the Armed Forces as 16.5% of the armed forces are officers and enlisted tend to lack college education in general yielding as much as 39.25% of the non-bachelor's degree holders in the federal govt.)
3. 16% of all federal government jobs are "government enterprise" and are self funded.
I conclude, that you are mainly speaking about the military enlisted members being overpaid and over compensated when you highlight those with only a High School education having much higher total compensation than the private work force.
It would be interesting to tease out the Bachelor's degree numbers without military officers and see if the total compensation is still as high. Not too many officers stay a 2nd LT or 1st LT for long (O-1 and O-2 ranks that are the main low compensation ranks as a military officer).
I have an acquaintance who is an E-8 in the military with 19 years time in service, a high school education, and when BAH + BAS + Base Pay + tax savings on BAH&BAS is calculated together their compensation is equivalent to around $80,000/yr.
CBO's report is Federal civilian employees. Would include DoD civilian but not enlisted personnel.
So, the point stands -- and again, BAs receive a 21% compensation premium compared to the typical BA in the private sector.
I don't think there is actually much of an argument amongst anyone who looks at it that Feds are on average paid more than they could receive in the private sector. That's why when you look at JOLTS data you'll see much lower quit rates for federal employees in than in the private sector. And again, none of these compensation comparisons control for job security, which is much, much higher in the federal sector.
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
This thread has provided great optics for private sector employees into the minds of their Fed betters, complete with Godwinning for pointing out their failure to provide for an adequate border defense despite spending $4 trillion per year. You've got "Take this job and shove it" on your signature line for crying out loud and expect us to believe that you're a tryhard civil servant worthy of all you get, which is more than us.
I think I'll be calling my Senator as well.
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
This thread has provided great optics for private sector employees into the minds of their Fed betters, complete with Godwinning for pointing out their failure to provide for an adequate border defense despite spending $4 trillion per year. You've got "Take this job and shove it" on your signature line for crying out loud and expect us to believe that you're a tryhard civil servant worthy of all you get, which is more than us.
I think I'll be calling my Senator as well.
I'm certain your call will make all the difference.
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Could anyone please write a good solid 30 second or less script for us to call our senators?
I'm thinking something along the lines of "please vote no on any budget which breaks the promises we made to our current Federal workforce and retirees".
The more people calling and leaving a message on their staff voicemail, the more likely we are to get enough "no" votes on the budget as it stands.
After reading this thread, I get the idea the majority here would want our senators to vote yes. The hardworking taxpayers have had our promise of SS at 65 taken away, and the File and suspend is gone.
I have had 12 increases in the FICA tax during my work career, with only an inflation adjustment, an not increase in the benefit.
Maybe we need a poll!
Not quite sure what you mean? Feds also pay taxes and also pay into SS and are subject to the same SS rules.
Just mean we all get changes from the government we don't want.
ETA, I think to have accurate polling responses from the feds themselves, you would have to get extremely granular. Some want no changes, some (like me) would be fine with high 5 versus high 3 pension calculations, or would be fine with paying more into the pension if it were stepped in gradually enough, but would lobby hard against e.g. chained CPI inflation adjustment, etc. Others would have differing opinions on what would be reasonable to change. It's not an all or nothing sort of question to most feds.
ETA again, By "the majority here would vote yes", do you mean the majority of feds on this thread? That is, after all, who the OP asked to respond.
OK I missed the ONLY feds on this thread. As I think did, about 80% of the respondents.
I think feds would definitely vote no, none of us want a cut in benefits.
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Personally I could care less about high 5 vs High 3. I'm OK with a bit higher of a pension contribution. I'm "moderately FI," (Above bare bones but below I don't have to think hard about spending), I'm truly sticking around for Health care for life and an early immediate pension. (I'm a LEO so am currently under generous time rules). If Health care disappearing/being more expensive + no cola + whatever else they cut happens I'm going to get my life guarding certificate and getting a job at the local gym (It was advertising the other day and I've been one before). My incentive not to pull the Trigger and RE right now is because the retirement/health benefits make it worth while, if that changes I'm gone.
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
This thread has provided great optics for private sector employees into the minds of their Fed betters, complete with Godwinning for pointing out their failure to provide for an adequate border defense despite spending $4 trillion per year. You've got "Take this job and shove it" on your signature line for crying out loud and expect us to believe that you're a tryhard civil servant worthy of all you get, which is more than us.
I think I'll be calling my Senator as well.
Do you have anything besides hot air and libertarian fantasies?
Well, I guess you have personal attacks against people you know nothing about. Let me fill you in.
While I can't speak for other feds, I can tell you that I took a substantial pay cut, as well as a reduction in health benefits, when I moved from a private sector consulting firm to a federal agency. After nearly 15 years in, I am again making decent money, but not nearly as much as I would be making in a similar position in the private sector. Why did I make the move to government? So I could work for an agency that serves the public good instead of working for clients that were maximizing their profits by damaging public resources.
Through the course of my government service, I've worked countless hours of unpaid overtime, donated or forfeited substantial amounts of my annual leave, and when I resign, I will leave $70,000 worth of sick leave on the table. I've done this because I am dedicated to my agency's mission, despite my frequent frustration with political leadership that, like you, views my colleagues and me as lazy good-for-nothings. The "do more with less" mentality has prevailed throughout my time in government. The ever-increasing workload has everyone in my unit stressed to the breaking point. We all made a bargain with Uncle - we'd accept lower pay than we could make in the private sector in exchange for meaningful work, work-life balance, and a bit more retirement security. Well, the work-life balance is long gone, the Cheeto administration's bullshit politics have made the work a lot less meaningful, and now Congress wants to renege on the retirement security. No wonder I'm ready to shove my "cushy government job."
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
This thread has provided great optics for private sector employees into the minds of their Fed betters, complete with Godwinning for pointing out their failure to provide for an adequate border defense despite spending $4 trillion per year. You've got "Take this job and shove it" on your signature line for crying out loud and expect us to believe that you're a tryhard civil servant worthy of all you get, which is more than us.
I think I'll be calling my Senator as well.
Do you have anything besides hot air and libertarian fantasies?
Well, I guess you have personal attacks against people you know nothing about. Let me fill you in.
While I can't speak for other feds, I can tell you that I took a substantial pay cut, as well as a reduction in health benefits, when I moved from a private sector consulting firm to a federal agency. After nearly 15 years in, I am again making decent money, but not nearly as much as I would be making in a similar position in the private sector. Why did I make the move to government? So I could work for an agency that serves the public good instead of working for clients that were maximizing their profits by damaging public resources.
Through the course of my government service, I've worked countless hours of unpaid overtime, donated or forfeited substantial amounts of my annual leave, and when I resign, I will leave $70,000 worth of sick leave on the table. I've done this because I am dedicated to my agency's mission, despite my frequent frustration with political leadership that, like you, views my colleagues and me as lazy good-for-nothings. The "do more with less" mentality has prevailed throughout my time in government. The ever-increasing workload has everyone in my unit stressed to the breaking point. We all made a bargain with Uncle - we'd accept lower pay than we could make in the private sector in exchange for meaningful work, work-life balance, and a bit more retirement security. Well, the work-life balance is long gone, the Cheeto administration's bullshit politics have made the work a lot less meaningful, and now Congress wants to renege on the retirement security. No wonder I'm ready to shove my "cushy government job."
I so appreciate that. My husband dragged himself out of multigenerational poverty via the military, then worked in law enforcement, and finally became the first person in his family to GO to college, let alone get multiple advanced degrees. He wanted to work for the feds for the exact same reason as you did, serving the public good, which he viewed as a much higher calling than pure buck-raking capitalism. He loves being a scientist, and he busts his ass at it now mostly out of a labor of love. He has zero complaints about his pay and benefits and would absorb some small cuts to his benefit package without complaint, just as he was fine with pay freezes the civilian feds endured many years since 2008. But he sure is getting tired of a decade of being asked to "do more with less money" while simultaneously being scapegoated as the cause of all evil by by half the government (civilian fed + scientist = antichrist, apparently), not to mention the poorly informed, mouth-breathing segment of the population he originally signed up to serve.
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
This thread has provided great optics for private sector employees into the minds of their Fed betters, complete with Godwinning for pointing out their failure to provide for an adequate border defense despite spending $4 trillion per year. You've got "Take this job and shove it" on your signature line for crying out loud and expect us to believe that you're a tryhard civil servant worthy of all you get, which is more than us.
I think I'll be calling my Senator as well.
Do you have anything besides hot air and libertarian fantasies?
Well, I guess you have personal attacks against people you know nothing about. Let me fill you in.
While I can't speak for other feds, I can tell you that I took a substantial pay cut, as well as a reduction in health benefits, when I moved from a private sector consulting firm to a federal agency. After nearly 15 years in, I am again making decent money, but not nearly as much as I would be making in a similar position in the private sector. Why did I make the move to government? So I could work for an agency that serves the public good instead of working for clients that were maximizing their profits by damaging public resources.
Through the course of my government service, I've worked countless hours of unpaid overtime, donated or forfeited substantial amounts of my annual leave, and when I resign, I will leave $70,000 worth of sick leave on the table. I've done this because I am dedicated to my agency's mission, despite my frequent frustration with political leadership that, like you, views my colleagues and me as lazy good-for-nothings. The "do more with less" mentality has prevailed throughout my time in government. The ever-increasing workload has everyone in my unit stressed to the breaking point. We all made a bargain with Uncle - we'd accept lower pay than we could make in the private sector in exchange for meaningful work, work-life balance, and a bit more retirement security. Well, the work-life balance is long gone, the Cheeto administration's bullshit politics have made the work a lot less meaningful, and now Congress wants to renege on the retirement security. No wonder I'm ready to shove my "cushy government job."
By libertarian fantasies I hope you mean hard evidence that the typical federal employee enjoys a large pay premium compared to his private sector peer. Again, the CBO found that the average individual with a BA enjoyed a 21% compensation premium.
I thank you for the service -- but according to you you were happy to trade lower pay for better work/life balance and meaningful work. Now that it appears you don't like it, I'm sure you can find better employment in the private sector.
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I took a huge a pay cut to work for the Feds. I did it for the work/life balance and job stability. I make over 6 figures as a fed and never have to work over 80 hours in a 2 week period. I work from home 3 days a week and get a 3 day weekend every other weekend. My job is completely stress free and once I leave the office or log out, it never even enters my mind. All of this is well worth the pay cut I took to leave the private sector.
The pension and health benefits aren't anything all that special in my opinion. The FERS pension is kind of shitty and would net you something like $30k a year after a 30 year career and $120k final salary. The pension would be much less for people who RE. I have no complaints about my health plan, but I pay a lot for it. It's not like it's free like some people seem to think. Hell, I could probably buy a cheaper plan on my own.
Private sector employees and Govt contractors definitely earn WAY more than we do as Feds. However, most Govt contractors don't get the work/life balance. They can't work from home at my agency and they can be fired at the drop of a hat. I believe there are plenty of private sector employers that offer a great work/life balance, but you have to worry about being downsized, or a boss on a power trip, etc.
Most of the far right folks that I've come across that complain about us Feds are just butt-hurt that they can't get a Federal job. We literally have hundreds and even thousands of applicants per job opening and that allows us to be choosy. As a result, almost everybody has an advanced degree of some sort. I've never worked with more intelligent, talented individuals ever in my life. Federal employees are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the Federal budget, so it's annoying to be constantly used as a political pawn. Like denying Federal employees a raise for 3 years saved truck loads of money or something? It's mostly to appease Republicans whose constituents are largely blue collar, white, and uneducated. It's like they are mad that they have to work 120 hours a week at the steel mill and then they see Johnny Fed next door only work 40 hours and then take 4 or 5 vacations a year.
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I agree with the bolded statement. Unfortunately, you and I are never going to agree on the metrics. Your metric seems to be reducing government expenditures as much as possible, regardless of the consequences. You advocate wholesale cutting of government functions without ever acknowledging what society would lose because of those cuts. Just end entitlements, HUD, NASA, the intelligence agencies, and the military as we know it. Seriously? Forget about the Russians, the fuckin' Canadians would overrun us if we did all of that!
You haven't even tried to put forth a set of metrics. You've only defended your pay. We're being overrun by Latin Americans will all of these things in place. People at the low end of the wage scale need higher pay facilitated by a better business environment, less competition from illegal labor, and government policies that favor stable families and productivity - not handouts.
Neither have you. You've just waved your hand and said we'll end most of what the government does and not worry about the consequences. And now you're drifting into racism.
Don't forget - you're the one who crashed the thread and started throwing around invective about how worthless the government and its employees are. If you have a serious proposal to make, complete with an assessment of the consequences and a plan to deal with them, then please make it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
This thread has provided great optics for private sector employees into the minds of their Fed betters, complete with Godwinning for pointing out their failure to provide for an adequate border defense despite spending $4 trillion per year. You've got "Take this job and shove it" on your signature line for crying out loud and expect us to believe that you're a tryhard civil servant worthy of all you get, which is more than us.
I think I'll be calling my Senator as well.
Do you have anything besides hot air and libertarian fantasies?
Well, I guess you have personal attacks against people you know nothing about. Let me fill you in.
While I can't speak for other feds, I can tell you that I took a substantial pay cut, as well as a reduction in health benefits, when I moved from a private sector consulting firm to a federal agency. After nearly 15 years in, I am again making decent money, but not nearly as much as I would be making in a similar position in the private sector. Why did I make the move to government? So I could work for an agency that serves the public good instead of working for clients that were maximizing their profits by damaging public resources.
Through the course of my government service, I've worked countless hours of unpaid overtime, donated or forfeited substantial amounts of my annual leave, and when I resign, I will leave $70,000 worth of sick leave on the table. I've done this because I am dedicated to my agency's mission, despite my frequent frustration with political leadership that, like you, views my colleagues and me as lazy good-for-nothings. The "do more with less" mentality has prevailed throughout my time in government. The ever-increasing workload has everyone in my unit stressed to the breaking point. We all made a bargain with Uncle - we'd accept lower pay than we could make in the private sector in exchange for meaningful work, work-life balance, and a bit more retirement security. Well, the work-life balance is long gone, the Cheeto administration's bullshit politics have made the work a lot less meaningful, and now Congress wants to renege on the retirement security. No wonder I'm ready to shove my "cushy government job."
By libertarian fantasies I hope you mean hard evidence that the typical federal employee enjoys a large pay premium compared to his private sector peer. Again, the CBO found that the average individual with a BA enjoyed a 21% compensation premium.
I thank you for the service -- but according to you you were happy to trade lower pay for better work/life balance and meaningful work. Now that it appears you don't like it, I'm sure you can find better employment in the private sector.
By libertarian fantasies, I meant Lance Burkhart's kooky idea to eliminate 2/3 of the government without so much as thinking about what that might mean for the American public. I don't dispute the fact that Uncle pays more than the private sector for run-of-the-mill, low complexity work. I myself am not in such a position and could easily make more if I went back to the consulting world. I could actually support adjusting the GS pay schedule and/or reclassifying positions so that base pay better reflects the work that is being done. But don't slash promised retirement benefits for people who've put in a full career and are counting on those benefits.
Apparently you missed the part of my post where I said the work/life balance doesn't exist any more due to the pervasive "do more with less" strategy that is being applied to many non-defense agencies (including mine). But rather than go back to the higher paying but even more soul-sucking private sector, I'm just going to bail altogether. Which, by the way, means that I will not be getting most of my "cushy" federal retirement benefits (no health insurance, no SS supplement, and my pension will be worth less than $7,000/yr in today's dollars once I finally get to take it).
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Unsaid also is that a significant percentage of Fed employees are military veterans who received a veteran's preference boost in Fed hiring decisions. I am one of those. I served for 6 years on active duty, then went to college and law school and took a LEO job with the Feds. I make FAR less on an annual basis than my law school colleagues who went private. On an hourly basis, the gap is not as wide, because I have reasonable work hours as compared to private sector lawyers, but they still make considerably more than I do. Hell, starting Big Firm law jobs make more than I do right out of law school than I'm making after 20 years of service, and I'm ok with that. But what I'm not okay with is somebody who doesn't know shit about what I do telling me I'm lazy and overpaid. That is a bullshit stereotype. And this pitting of people against one another is just fucking horrible. You know why they don't put lids on crab buckets? Because the crabs keep each other down. That is exactly what's going on in this country right now. GOP politicians who are in the pockets of the wealthiest people in the world are pitting citizens against federal workers to divide us and make it easier to shit on everyone and for their billionaire benefactors to siphon more and more from of nation's wealth. It is truly sickening to me that people fall for this shit. Rather than seeking to lift others, they would pull everyone else down to their level. Jealous of federal pensions? Then for fuck's sake, start a movement to bring back pensions in the private sector and make them unassailable so companies can't renege. My federal pension, for which I've paid in for 26 years, is FULLY FUNDED for as far out as the actuarial tables can see (2090's). Federal pensions are not responsible for this country's debt woes. Stupid, pie-in-the-sky tax cuts for the wealthiest among us are the primary culprit.
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I guess I'll throw in my two cents and stick up for the feds. I'm a civil servant w/the DoD. I'm in an R&D role and work a physicist. I work with contractors and civilians on a daily basis, mainly engineers and computer scientists and every once in a while another scientist like me. The group I'm in does physics based modeling of weapon systems.
First, I think there are a couple of misconceptions that need to be dispelled.
1) That civil servants are a dominating presence in my (DoD) industry driving up the federal budget. The reality is that in my branch, we have about 17 civil servants and 85 contractors who work with us. I'm the last permanent civil servant (e.g. government employee) hire in my branch. That was in 2011. We have hired a few people as government employees since then as "term" employees (e.g. a 3-year position after which the position is in essence terminated). My perception (as a generally libertarian/conservative politically leaning person) is that the war that Repubs have waged on "overpaid civil servants" is a smokescreen. We have not been allowed to make government hires for the past 6 years. But we have no problems having our support contractors bringing on new folks (who the government pays for). And bringing on additional contractors most definitely costs more to the government than hiring a new government employee. However, it is definitely easier to surge and reduce the contract workforce than the government workforce.
As an aside, in a lot of ways, this dependence on contractors to do a large portion of our technical work puts the government in a precarious position. If for example, we re-competed the current contract we have w/a the company who provides most of our technical support and they lost the contract to a new company, there is a real risk of losing significant institutional knowledge. In many ways, long-term costs to the government could be lowered by accumulating more institutional knowledge "in-house" with government employees.
2) Civil servants are "generally" or "all" (or pick your adjective) overpaid. I've worked for state agencies (a university as a researcher after grad school), for private companies, and now for the federal government. I also interface with contractors (e.g. private companies) on a daily basis. I can say that right now, the starting salaries for fresh grads is higher for the private company who supports us than it would be if a grad came and worked as a government employee. Two caveats to this, though. First, if you come in as a government employee, I do believe that initial advancement is faster than with a private company. Second, government employee pay scales are "squashed" on the top end. E.g. our contractor technical lead makes more than our government technical lead. Around here, this would be the evolution of salaries (assuming you're good at your job)....
Fresh Grad------>5 years------>10 years------>15 years
Gov't $55k $75k $90k $100-110k
Private $60-70k $75-80k $83-90k $120-175k
The numbers for the private sector are based on a combo of my own experience in the private sector and conversations with private sector companies in our industry and what they're currently offering.
Look...the reality is that there are crappy employees in every organization, government and private. There are also stellar employees in every organization. Within the government there are stellar organizations and crappy ones. To try to stereotype "government workers" is trying to stereotype employees and people that cross so many different skill sets, career types, etc, that it's ludicrous. Are we (civil servants) overcompensated? I think that depends on what you value. I obviously left the private sector to become a civil servant. I valued the work that I'd be able to do and some of the benefits (work life balance, a generally stable retirement system, etc). But, I gave up benefits that the private sector would have provided (back end career earnings, partial ownership in a employee owned company that paid out ~10% of my annual salary in company stock every year). Could there be fields w/in federal civil service that are grossly overpaid relative to private sector counterparts? I'm sure there are. I suspect there are also segments that are underpaid. Are there government organizations that are bloated? Sure. Are the private organizations that are bloated? You bet.
Ultimately, I think many of the complaints against federal employees are rooted in a desire to blame politicians for the terrible positions they've put as in as a country financially. However, I don't think the answer to making things better is to reduce the attractiveness of federal employment. As someone who has recruited for the government at multiple career fairs, I can tell you that it is generally difficult for us to "win" the best candidates (for a multitude of reasons). Cutting benefits will make it more difficult to attract top talent...which will end up leading to more people complaining to about how lazy and spoiled we are:-)
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Thanks for sticking up for the Feds, @mrigney.
Was it naive of me to expect this thread to stay on topic?
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Thanks for sticking up for the Feds, @mrigney.
Was it naive of me to expect this thread to stay on topic?
I'm the OP and I got tired of the foam on page one. :)
Thank you to all of you who have attempted to help our more cynical members see things from our perspective. The divisiveness is exactly why the President and our current batch of representatives believe they can do this to us....the civilian population has been effectively trained to see us as the enemy, undeserving of the benefits we were promised.
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Was it naive of me to expect this thread to stay on topic?
Yes. Mentioning federal employees in public is kind of like mentioning abortion. You just KNOW some hateful motherfuckers are going to show up and start arguing.
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We deal with the whole "dragging others down" thing internally as well.
A few years ago, a lower grade got rid of a position that was dragging their pay down when the wage rates were figured out (we are not GS). So, this bumped their pay up to match the next grade up (and actually calculated even higher). Instead of saying "hey, they got this huge raise, and we are technically more skilled, etc, we need to fight to get our wages up higher", everyone just yelled "that's not fair! You need to cut their wages so they don't make as much as us." Those of us who didn't want to just lower someone else's wages tried to point out that you should use their gain as a reason to fight for your own. But, no one was interested in going that route.
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I was a Federal Employee for over 30 years. I think there's room to talk about how we can make our government more effective and efficient. There's room for a discussion of compensation of Federal employees. That said, I don't think the Government should be in the business of making unilateral changes to its agreements. I view my own work/retirement agreement as a contract. I lived up to my part of the deal, and the government should live up to its part. Defaulting on its debt to me should be no different from defaulting on government bonds.
It bothers me that some posters felt the need to turn OP's question about proposed changes to the retirement system into personal attacks on federal employees. During my career, I certainly saw some low performing people, just as I did, and do, in the private sector. I was also privileged to work with many, many fine men and women who did outstanding work under difficult and dangerous circumstances. I had many close friends and colleagues give their lives and even their family members' lives in service to America. Many took pay cuts to serve their country, and most routinely worked far more hours than they were paid for with no additional compensation. Work/Life balance was something people talked about a lot and wished for, but I frequently saw colleagues working close to 24/7 in emergencies. When I see malicious comments about federal employees, I tend to think about these people.
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^^^^ Great post @ROF Expat
The dude calling all government workers lazy, dumb, and overpaid made me wonder how my workplace managed to track down and kill Usama Bin Laden (along with several hundred other top terrorist leaders over the years). That was a feat accomplished by bringing together so much hard work, technical wizardry, intelligence (the kind we possess and the kind we gather), risk, multidisciplinary expertise, patience, personal sacrifice,and lots of other things I haven't even thought of. But no doubt the private sector could have pulled it off in 2 weeks since it's unburdened by lazy people and bureaucracy, plus all those overpaid people with degrees but no actual abilities or smarts. So go ahead and keep vilifying us government workers, we're all sucking off the teat of useful society.
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Was it naive of me to expect this thread to stay on topic?
Yes. Mentioning federal employees in public is kind of like mentioning abortion. You just KNOW some hateful motherfuckers are going to show up and start arguing.
I try to imagine any other class of people or occupation mentioned in a thread, and then a whole bunch of haters feeling free to launch a bullshit-laden attack full of ugly stereotypes, because.
Q. "Hey, any other plumbers dealing with how to adapt to the new national code standards just released?"
A. "All you plumbers are just a bunch of fat guys showing your butt crack and charging us way too much money just to show up and turn a wrench, which a fifth-grader could do with 5 minutes of instruction."
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Staying on-topic the potential changes to retirement came up at the office again today. Basically people who are within about 1-2 years of retiring (which our office happens to have quite a few of) were saying that they would retire now if they thought the benefits would change. us young folks are pretty much ignoring it because what can you do and the Feds is the biggest employer in our field so it's not like people want to leave.
In super exciting news my TSP passed $200k with the last paycheck so maybe I won't need to stick around for traditional retirement! (I'm 34 now)
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In the "How much do you pay in taxes" thread started yesterday, this link was posted http://rootofgood.com/make-six-figure-income-pay-no-tax/
And he mentioned cashing out his pension. I figured he was state but decided to see if FERS employees can cash out, and sure enough you can!
So now I'm thinking if significant changes to FERS take place, that may be a better option where I can invest that money on my own. It will still be a raw deal as I bought back my military time and it won't be worth as much as the pension would be, but I'd have better control over it and could put the money in a taxable account and use immediately. Plus, it means not having to worry about 20+ years of threats by Congress before I'm even eligible to withdraw.
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Yeah, I actually ran some rough numbers after the post and it might be able to provide $1K a year in income by the timd I'd have hit MRA. That's versus the almost $1k a month the pension would currently give.
Would take a pretty major change to make it worthwhile to pull it out. Oh well.
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In super exciting news my TSP passed $200k with the last paycheck so maybe I won't need to stick around for traditional retirement! (I'm 34 now)
Nice job, man!
Yeah, I actually ran some rough numbers after the post and it might be able to provide $1K a year in income by the time I'd have hit MRA. That's versus the almost $1k a month the pension would currently give.
So you're saying NOT cashing out pension and contributing @ 4.4% delayed until payout at MRA is about 1k a month. While cashing out pension is about 1k per year (lets say for 10 working years). Did you calculate what that 10k compounds to until MRA? Probably requires age assumptions.
I'd run the numbers but... it's the weekend :)
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In super exciting news my TSP passed $200k with the last paycheck so maybe I won't need to stick around for traditional retirement! (I'm 34 now)
Nice job, man!
Yeah, I actually ran some rough numbers after the post and it might be able to provide $1K a year in income by the time I'd have hit MRA. That's versus the almost $1k a month the pension would currently give.
So you're saying NOT cashing out pension and contributing @ 4.4% delayed until payout at MRA is about 1k a month. While cashing out pension is about 1k per year (lets say for 10 working years). Did you calculate what that 10k compounds to until MRA? Probably requires age assumptions.
I'd run the numbers but... it's the weekend :)
I know I need to run the numbers for myself as well, in case this all goes through and I decide to leave before 57 (my MRA). If there is no COLA, no health benefits, and no SSS, it really removes my reasons for staying that long. At 38, I have over $400k in TSP, 17 years into my pension, and a long time to go. If I build soon, sell the current house, and save like mad for a couple years when I'm done helping DS with school, I might be able to go at my more-desired age of 46, but at least by 52. Really wish my position was more likely to be eligible for early outs! The retirement benefits are what would keep me to my MRA, but once they're gone, so is my desire to stay (and I really have a great job).
(As an aside, I'll be in your town for training this week!)
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In super exciting news my TSP passed $200k with the last paycheck so maybe I won't need to stick around for traditional retirement! (I'm 34 now)
Nice job, man!
Yeah, I actually ran some rough numbers after the post and it might be able to provide $1K a year in income by the time I'd have hit MRA. That's versus the almost $1k a month the pension would currently give.
So you're saying NOT cashing out pension and contributing @ 4.4% delayed until payout at MRA is about 1k a month. While cashing out pension is about 1k per year (lets say for 10 working years). Did you calculate what that 10k compounds to until MRA? Probably requires age assumptions.
I'd run the numbers but... it's the weekend :)
I'm on vacation so the numbers are off the top of my head, but inflation adjusted I want to say it's about $12k a year for FERS delayed retirement, and cashing out is something incredibly small that would grow to $25k in 20 years, giving me $1k a month.
Unless you're a 2013 or later hire, seems like it'd be worth it to roll the dice and see what you get. Then again, if they bump up the employee contribution it may end up being significant one day.
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Are any Fed workers considering a change in employment if the increased contributions go thru?
As Sol has mentioned, required increased pension contributions is really painful for people working towards FIRE...
No way, can't do it. For starters, I'm 20 years in with only 1.5 to go until eligibility. Second, the increased contributions would reportedly be phased in, so doubtful much impact would occur to me over that period. What would kill my FIRE dreams is abolishing the SRS and COLAs. If those are taken away, then I'll likely have to forego retiring in 2019 and continue to age 57 in 2022. Which would make me one disgruntled and spectacularly unmotivated employee.
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The budget resolution passed by the Senate does not include any changes to federal retirement:
https://federalnewsradio.com/budget/2017/10/senate-passes-budget-resolution-without-instructions-for-retirement-cuts/ (https://federalnewsradio.com/budget/2017/10/senate-passes-budget-resolution-without-instructions-for-retirement-cuts/)
Will be interesting to see if this holds up during reconciliation.
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^^^^ Great post @ROF Expat
The dude calling all government workers lazy, dumb, and overpaid made me wonder how my workplace managed to track down and kill Usama Bin Laden (along with several hundred other top terrorist leaders over the years). That was a feat accomplished by bringing together so much hard work, technical wizardry, intelligence (the kind we possess and the kind we gather), risk, multidisciplinary expertise, patience, personal sacrifice,and lots of other things I haven't even thought of. But no doubt the private sector could have pulled it off in 2 weeks since it's unburdened by lazy people and bureaucracy, plus all those overpaid people with degrees but no actual abilities or smarts. So go ahead and keep vilifying us government workers, we're all sucking off the teat of useful society.
What is the effect of all this? Do you ever step back to look at the big picture? Is global terrorism on the wane? We're STILL in Afghanistan after 16 years. It's become the longest war in US history. New leaders have filled the gap left by OBL. Our own government had a hand in making OBL who he was in the first place when he and his mujahideen were fighting the Russians. Al Qaeda is still active in Afghanistan along with the Taliban and the Haqqani network (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/what-is-the-haqqani-network). Meanwhile, our politicians are still completely in bed (http://amazon.com/Sleeping-Devil-Washington-Saudi-Crude-ebook/dp/B000FBFO64/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1508729803&sr=1-1&keywords=sleeping+with+the+devil) with the House of Saud which spends a lot of money exporting jihad globally.
What was the effect of our war in Iraq? ISIS? Ethnic cleansing of Christians, Druze, and other minorities who'd lived there for thousands of years? Yes the government is definitely better at all this than the private sector.
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By libertarian fantasies, I meant Lance Burkhart's kooky idea to eliminate 2/3 of the government without so much as thinking about what that might mean for the American public. I don't dispute the fact that Uncle pays more than the private sector for run-of-the-mill, low complexity work.
At some point, I have to accept that your reading comprehension does not depend on me, especially when you have no incentive to understand. The original link I posted at the CATO institute called for about $500 billion in cuts the first year phasing in enough over a 10 year period that we pay off our national debt. Even those cuts don't amount to 2/3 of the Federal budget. I proposed about $700 billion in cuts this year which is just enough to get us into the black for this year counting all of the natural disasters we've paid for. Elsewhere I mentioned a uniform 20% reduction.
We spend roughly 4 trillion a year. What's .7/4? It's not 2/3. If you can't do these basic back-of-the-envelope calculations, you shouldn't be lecturing anyone on how we can't cut the budget because some people will get the sads.
I myself am not in such a position and could easily make more if I went back to the consulting world. I could actually support adjusting the GS pay schedule and/or reclassifying positions so that base pay better reflects the work that is being done. But don't slash promised retirement benefits for people who've put in a full career and are counting on those benefits.
No one's slashing your bennies. Did you even read the proposed bill or just some fakenews hack report on it? Here's the only way I can see federal employment benefits getting cut: we continue down our national path to insolvency and then all bets are off (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/).
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^^^^ Great post @ROF Expat
The dude calling all government workers lazy, dumb, and overpaid made me wonder how my workplace managed to track down and kill Usama Bin Laden (along with several hundred other top terrorist leaders over the years). That was a feat accomplished by bringing together so much hard work, technical wizardry, intelligence (the kind we possess and the kind we gather), risk, multidisciplinary expertise, patience, personal sacrifice,and lots of other things I haven't even thought of. But no doubt the private sector could have pulled it off in 2 weeks since it's unburdened by lazy people and bureaucracy, plus all those overpaid people with degrees but no actual abilities or smarts. So go ahead and keep vilifying us government workers, we're all sucking off the teat of useful society.
What is the effect of all this? Do you ever step back to look at the big picture? Is global terrorism on the wane? We're STILL in Afghanistan after 16 years. It's become the longest war in US history. New leaders have filled the gap left by OBL. Our own government had a hand in making OBL who he was in the first place when he and his mujahideen were fighting the Russians. Al Qaeda is still active in Afghanistan along with the Taliban and the Haqqani network (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/what-is-the-haqqani-network). Meanwhile, our politicians are still completely in bed (http://amazon.com/Sleeping-Devil-Washington-Saudi-Crude-ebook/dp/B000FBFO64/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1508729803&sr=1-1&keywords=sleeping+with+the+devil) with the House of Saud which spends a lot of money exporting jihad globally.
What was the effect of our war in Iraq? ISIS? Ethnic cleansing of Christians, Druze, and other minorities who'd lived there for thousands of years? Yes the government is definitely better at all this than the private sector.
Congratulations, this is by far your dumbest post (of several whoppers, including the one below) in this thread. If you truly are not a troll and can't see why your post is ridiculous, then I suggest you stop posting altogether until you figure it out. If you secretly know you are posting drivel but can't seem to stop doing it, then perhaps step away from the keyboard until you figure out and deal with whatever personal issues are driving you to embarrass yourself in this way.
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The House just passed the Senate's budget resolution unchanged, so the cuts appear to be off the table for now. I guess we'll see what comes out in the actual spending bills.
https://federalnewsradio.com/your-money/2017/10/feds-saved-from-retirement-cuts-in-2018-budget-resolution-with-house-vote/ (https://federalnewsradio.com/your-money/2017/10/feds-saved-from-retirement-cuts-in-2018-budget-resolution-with-house-vote/)
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Yep, that's good news. Another article:
http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/retirement-planning/2017/10/benefits-spared-budget-ax/142087/?oref=retirement_planning_nl
Now I just gotta see how the tax cuts will affect me. It doesn't look good. And of course, if the tax cuts pass, when, as is inevitable and predictable, federal deficits start to balloon as a result, the GOP will blame fed workers' benefits and make a renewed assault on them.