Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Two Americas: Public vs. Private Sector Update

The BLS released its quarterly report today on "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation" for December 2009, and the key results are displayed above and summarized below.

Private industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December 2009. Wages and salaries averaged $19.41 per hour worked and accounted for 70.8% of these costs, while benefits averaged $8.00 per hour and accounted for the remaining 29.2%.

Total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour worked in December 2009 (including benefits of $13.50 per hour), which was 44.5% higher than compensation for private industry workers.

10 Comments:

At 3/10/2010 4:23 PM, Blogger McKibbinUSA said...

Tell me again why this is not the leading story on news channels...?

 
At 3/10/2010 4:56 PM, Blogger PeakTrader said...

I wouldn't be surprised if public employees are gaining in the housing market, at the expense of private employees, including claiming the $8,000 tax credit.

 
At 3/10/2010 6:44 PM, Blogger Marko said...

It is a headline on Fox News, they have been talking about this in a general way for days.

The government now also wants to make sure contractors are over paid. http://www.jacksonlewis.com/legalupdates/article.cfm?aid=1994

This is a nightmare for companies like my former employer that has federal contracts as part of its business. The cost of compliance keeps going up, but the amount of the money the feds are spreading around keeps going up so companies can't resist!

 
At 3/10/2010 8:41 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We need salary caps, particularly in the public schools....Cap pensions at $100,000. The unions are destroying the goose that laid the golden eggs...

 
At 3/10/2010 9:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Las Vegas mayor wants to fire all public employees, then rehire them:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/goodman-says-city-should-fire-all-workers-87255622.html

We'll see more of this in the coming weeks/months/years.

 
At 3/11/2010 6:44 AM, Anonymous SPEPost said...

While the figures appear different, looking at the reference-link, there doesn't seem enough detailed data to compare an identical job of the private sector to one of the public... which I think the implication

 
At 3/11/2010 8:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You need to separate out the Washington DC people. They receive much more than the average Federal employee.

 
At 3/15/2010 10:00 AM, Blogger Joe638NYC said...

Silly post, how many government waitresses are there(min. wage at around $2 an hour)? Is DC in charge of McDonald's too? How easy is it for an undocumented worker to become a fireman, not quite as easy as getting a false SS card and working for the privates, eh?

Thanks for helping the elites to get the wrench turners in this country to fight amongst themselves.

 
At 3/15/2010 11:26 AM, Blogger Staven said...

This doesn't seem to account for employment type: such as Mcdonald's employee vs a police chief vs a government accountant.

It would also be screwed because company have a habit of cutting pay and benefits significantly faster than the government does (this is because the government has a job to do while the corporations simply try to please short term investors)

 
At 3/17/2010 8:55 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd also like to point out that everyone I personally know with a government job got it though family connections.

 

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