Federal Employees at the Trough

The real Federal welfare program:

Last week, USA Today reported that nearly one in five federal government employees now earn over $100,000. The paper also reported the average federal salary rose to $71,260, almost $31,000 more than the comparative average private-sector wage.

Within the Department of Defense, over 10,000 employees (as of June 2009) now earn at least $150,000 per year, a 5½-fold increase in the number of employees eclipsing this salary threshold from just eighteen months ago.

At the same time as federal employee salaries have been soaring, total private sector earnings have steadily declined as the unemployment rate escalates (now at 10%) and the average workweek declines. In fact, in November, private-sector employees worked an average of just 33.2 hours, slightly above the all-time low set in October (33.0 hours) and well below the forty hours guaranteed to federal employees. Simultaneously, average private sector hourly earnings totaled $18.74 per hour, significantly below the implied hourly wage rates ($34.25 per hour) paid to the average federal employee.

However, simply analyzing the growth in total paid compensation fails to capture the true explosion in benefits paid to federal workers.

For example, government employees almost never work on weekends. And if a federal employee does work on Sunday, he becomes eligible for Sunday Premium Pay. Federal employees are also entitled to compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay, a benefit few private sector firms are able to offer.

Paid time off for federal employees is also extremely generous. Employees with less than three years' tenure earn twelve paid days off per year. For service between three and fifteen years, workers are guaranteed eighteen days off with pay. And when an employee reaches fifteen years of service, this benefit grows to twenty-four days.

Federal employees are also guaranteed ten federal holidays with pay.

With all this time off, some government workers might be hard-pressed to use actually use it. No worries -- federal workers have a very liberal carryover policy: thirty days for all employees. However, if you get stationed overseas, this policy expands to forty-five days. And if you become classified as a "Senior Executive Service," a "Senior-Level" [employee], or a "Scientific or Professional Employee," the policy expands to ninety days.

Naturally, at retirement, or if an employee decides to leave government service, any unused time is compensated for with cash -- a lump-sum payout that could easily amount to between $6,000 and $17,800 based on the "average" federal salary figure. For senior-level employees who earn the highest pay levels, such payouts could easily total $30,000 and might even exceed $50,000, thereby eclipsing the average annual salary of an American in the private sector.

The benefits continue. On top of paid time off, federal employees are also eligible for half a day of sick time per biweekly pay period. Thus, in a 52-week year, each full-time employee may accrue 13 days of sick time. There are also no limits on the amount of sick leave an employee may accumulate. Moreover, when an employee retires, any unused sick pay is added to the calculation of the employee's retirement annuity, thereby increasing the value of the annuity payouts received by federal employees during retirement.

And yet there is still more. As part of the Student Loan Repayment Program, a benefit enacted by Congress in 2007, all federal government employees are eligible for up to $10,000 per year in student loan forgiveness, a benefit capped at $60,000 per individual. (This benefit requires ten years of government service.)

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