Are Most Federal Workers Overpaid? CBO Says Yes

The less educated you are, the better it is to work for the federal government — at least when it comes to your paycheck.

That’s more or less the finding of a new study by the Congressional Budget Office, which compared federal workforce compensation to the private sector using data from 2005 through 2010. The big headline figures, sure to make the rounds in conservative media, are that government employees made 2% more in wages, and 16% more in overall compensation, than their private sector counterparts. But as the graph below shows, there were vast variations between education levels. Read more.

[Image: Congressional Budget Office]

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7. mcgaber reblogged this from theatlantic and added:

   My sister excluded. She’s pretty darn smart.

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13. amillionscreams said: This is a lazy headline. “Overpaid” would, to me, mean they are compensated too highly relative to their responsibilities/education, not that they are simply paid more than non-public workers in comparable fields. As it reads, it’s a value judgment.
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    Here’s a telling example of the kind of lazy neoliberal analysis we’ve all come to expect from The Atlantic, one that...

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32. absurdlakefront reblogged this from theatlantic and added:

    Due to stagnant wages over the last 30 years for most jobs considered to support a middle class lifestyle, I would...

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34. usagroningen said: One could argue that private sector employees are _underpaid_ relative to federal employees. Weren’t you listening when Occupy spoke?
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    Big government. Nuff said.

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40. cubicmetaphysics reblogged this from theatlantic and added:

    Saying that they’re overpaid is quite a normative assumption.

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45. ian-zappa said: ha!!!!!!!!!! thats great : )
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