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I am not sure public sector work pays less than equivalent private sector work on the whole. I don't know for certain either way. My unsubstantiated belief was

I am not sure public sector work pays less than equivalent private sector work on the whole. I don't know for certain either way. My unsubstantiated belief was that it was higher and sometimes significantly so especially taking into account benefits, vacation time, and overtime policies. So citation needed.

bittercynic 10y ago
I don't have an answer as to who pays more for equivalent work, but I don't think that is the only important question. Suppose a bright young person has the skills to be a great elementary school teacher and to be a software engineer. If being a teacher is known to lead to a life of poverty, then few people who have options will choose teaching. If the only people who teach are those with no other options, then we have a problem. If you need effective people to make your organization function, you have to compete for them, and not just within your industry.
kefka 10y ago
Admittedly, I found hundreds of resources. Half of them said that "Private Makes More". The other half said "Public Makes More". The ones that said that Private makes more, usually added in commentary about Right-to-Work states, and discussed unions, whereas "Public Makes More" discussed the excesses and governmental waste, and evils of taxes. I'm sure you can see a trend of biases here. Attacking Private was Democrats and Left leaning orgs. Attacking Public was Republicans and Right leaning orgs. The best, most impartial was from a reddit posting (https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_private_sector_work_still_generally_pay_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_pr... ) asking specifically about engineering pay between public and private. Of course, by the very definition they are anecdotal. But they seemed to try to answer "What is better monetarily and compensation-wise, rather than bringing in socio-politics in its stead.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  The third possibility that is curiously rarely considered by so called 'market' advocates is that it might be a competitive market and both groups are offered more or less equally attractive compensation packages.
  - kefka 10y ago
    I would think a way to discern this, is that absolute cash in hand, private makes more. Public, if you add in the non-cash benefits, makes more. The argument however, of what I was making, is that if attrition destroys the understood contract of the non-cash benefits, Public would make significantly less and be less able to attract good talent. We are already seeing that with regards to K-12 teaching profession in many states. I was asked to cite sources; kindly at that after respectful disagreement. After some searching, determined that answering that was going to be extremely partisan, and refused to answer the question at hand of "citation needed". And your suggested answer seems to be what the hordes on reddit kind of, not really, sort of agreed to. In the end, even on reddit, it was back and forth 50% one way, and the other.
  - wahern 10y ago
    It should be expected (and the common wisdom) is that government jobs pay less than comparative work in the private sector, all else being equal. That's because government jobs are protected by the constitution. Courts have said that government employees have a property interest in their employment such that the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments attach. Firing and even laying people off is much more costly in the public sector because the government has to follow and document detailed procedures when firing or even reprimanding employees. The legal burden is on the government to show legality, whereas in at-will private sector employment the burden is on the employee to show illegality. It's a _huge_ difference. Also, there tends to be much less funding and employment volatility in the public sector. The [theoretical] ability to increase taxes, and favored rates on municipal bonds, make it easier to cover short-term gaps in funding jobs. Therefore, given the relative job security, we should expect public employees to make less than their private sector counterparts. In practice, though, it's more difficult to assess. In almost all states large segments of public sector employment operate basically as a jobs program--for various disadvantaged groups (i.e. blue collar worker without a college degree, minorities, etc). And part of the reason is because similar blue collar jobs in the private sector have disappeared. That makes comparing income difficult. At the other end of the scale, highly skilled people likely value job security much less. That means there's more pressure to increase salaries to attract those individuals. EDIT (append): Also, at the federal level there exists a relatively unknown non-partisan equilibrium / agreement in Congress that has capped the federal civil service. The number of federal civil service employees has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s.[1] The huge growth in discretionary federal spending has been funneled into out-sourcing. Huge swaths of the "private" economy are basically federal jobs programs. Firing is much easier, but executives and shareholders get to skim cream from the top. The whole dynamic really confounds everything. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
kobeya 10y ago
I've worked in the public sector. It often pays better with better working conditions and better benefits (even excluding the pension) than private sector jobs. It just doesn't compare well to Silicon Valley tech standards, which is an entirely unreasonable comparison to make.
walshemj 10y ago
You don't get share options for one and you haven to take pensions fund valuations with a very big pinch of salt as both sides have interests here. As long as you have a steady state of members joining at the base DB schemes some of the more extreme cases are very unlikely and would require for example losing 100% of the deferred scheme members overnight.
vondur 10y ago
Public sector usually pays less, but the benefits tend to make it about equal to the private sector. (Health and Retirement)

bittercynic 10y ago

I don't have an answer as to who pays more for equivalent work, but I don't think that is the only important question. Suppose a bright young person has the skills to be a great elementary school teacher and to be a software engineer. If being a teacher is known to lead to a life of poverty, then few people who have options will choose teaching. If the only people who teach are those with no other options, then we have a problem. If you need effective people to make your organization function, you have to compete for them, and not just within your industry.

kefka 10y ago

Admittedly, I found hundreds of resources. Half of them said that "Private Makes More". The other half said "Public Makes More". The ones that said that Private makes more, usually added in commentary about Right-to-Work states, and discussed unions, whereas "Public Makes More" discussed the excesses and governmental waste, and evils of taxes. I'm sure you can see a trend of biases here. Attacking Private was Democrats and Left leaning orgs. Attacking Public was Republicans and Right leaning orgs. The best, most impartial was from a reddit posting (https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_private_sector_work_still_generally_pay_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_pr... ) asking specifically about engineering pay between public and private. Of course, by the very definition they are anecdotal. But they seemed to try to answer "What is better monetarily and compensation-wise, rather than bringing in socio-politics in its stead.

crdoconnor 10y ago
The third possibility that is curiously rarely considered by so called 'market' advocates is that it might be a competitive market and both groups are offered more or less equally attractive compensation packages.
- kefka 10y ago
  I would think a way to discern this, is that absolute cash in hand, private makes more. Public, if you add in the non-cash benefits, makes more. The argument however, of what I was making, is that if attrition destroys the understood contract of the non-cash benefits, Public would make significantly less and be less able to attract good talent. We are already seeing that with regards to K-12 teaching profession in many states. I was asked to cite sources; kindly at that after respectful disagreement. After some searching, determined that answering that was going to be extremely partisan, and refused to answer the question at hand of "citation needed". And your suggested answer seems to be what the hordes on reddit kind of, not really, sort of agreed to. In the end, even on reddit, it was back and forth 50% one way, and the other.
- wahern 10y ago
  It should be expected (and the common wisdom) is that government jobs pay less than comparative work in the private sector, all else being equal. That's because government jobs are protected by the constitution. Courts have said that government employees have a property interest in their employment such that the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments attach. Firing and even laying people off is much more costly in the public sector because the government has to follow and document detailed procedures when firing or even reprimanding employees. The legal burden is on the government to show legality, whereas in at-will private sector employment the burden is on the employee to show illegality. It's a _huge_ difference. Also, there tends to be much less funding and employment volatility in the public sector. The [theoretical] ability to increase taxes, and favored rates on municipal bonds, make it easier to cover short-term gaps in funding jobs. Therefore, given the relative job security, we should expect public employees to make less than their private sector counterparts. In practice, though, it's more difficult to assess. In almost all states large segments of public sector employment operate basically as a jobs program--for various disadvantaged groups (i.e. blue collar worker without a college degree, minorities, etc). And part of the reason is because similar blue collar jobs in the private sector have disappeared. That makes comparing income difficult. At the other end of the scale, highly skilled people likely value job security much less. That means there's more pressure to increase salaries to attract those individuals. EDIT (append): Also, at the federal level there exists a relatively unknown non-partisan equilibrium / agreement in Congress that has capped the federal civil service. The number of federal civil service employees has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s.[1] The huge growth in discretionary federal spending has been funneled into out-sourcing. Huge swaths of the "private" economy are basically federal jobs programs. Firing is much easier, but executives and shareholders get to skim cream from the top. The whole dynamic really confounds everything. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...

kobeya 10y ago

I've worked in the public sector. It often pays better with better working conditions and better benefits (even excluding the pension) than private sector jobs. It just doesn't compare well to Silicon Valley tech standards, which is an entirely unreasonable comparison to make.

walshemj 10y ago

You don't get share options for one and you haven to take pensions fund valuations with a very big pinch of salt as both sides have interests here. As long as you have a steady state of members joining at the base DB schemes some of the more extreme cases are very unlikely and would require for example losing 100% of the deferred scheme members overnight.

vondur 10y ago

Public sector usually pays less, but the benefits tend to make it about equal to the private sector. (Health and Retirement)