4 ms·

> This is not correct for most public employees. Depending on the employee, the ratio will be broadly similar to that of a private-sector employee doing a simil

> This is not correct for most public employees. Depending on the employee, the ratio will be broadly similar to that of a private-sector employee doing a similar job. This is absolutely false. Participation in retirement benefits is 52% in private industry vs 82% in state and local government. Medical care and benefits is 47% vs 66% and the employee share of the premium is 22% vs 14%. Life insurance participation is 56% vs 81%. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf Benefit costs are 29.5% for private industry vs 38.3% for state and local governments. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf The difference is larger for federal jobs.

runako 4y ago
> This is absolutely false. What's your source? So first, I was primarily responding to the claim that benefits are "usually the highest of any public employee," which is absolutely not the case. The insurance policies and retirement plans offered in the public sector are absolutely not more than the cash compensation of public employees. A state employee that has a gross cash compensation of $7k does not receive anything like $7k in insurance benefits monthly. "Depending on the employee" and "broadly similar". So 69% (private) vs. 92% (state & local gov't) have access to a retirement plan. Yes, that's broadly similar. But for the context of HN readers, who will skew towards "professional and related occupations, " the gap is only 8 points. (Looking at participation doesn't make sense when evaluating jobs because it evaluates what other people do versus what is on offer.) The calculation for medical and life insurance is similar. If you look more closely at the data, it will be obvious that the private sector numbers are dragged down by absolutely shitty jobs that don't pay well and have few benefits. In a sense, it's not reasonable to compare the pool of all private sector workers with state and local employees; the latter are dominated by "better" jobs that are better whether you have them in the public or private sector. In general, an engineering job comes with medical insurance whether that job is working for the state or Google. The other thing that comes out of this data is that we should obviously consider making it so that private sector jobs have a higher floor of benefits so that taxpayers don't have to be the safety net. Instead of wondering why government jobs have such great benefits (they don't, really), we should wonder why so many private sector jobs are dependent on taxpayers picking up the tab for e.g. food stamps for people with full-time employment in the private sector.

runako 4y ago

> This is absolutely false. What's your source? So first, I was primarily responding to the claim that benefits are "usually the highest of any public employee," which is absolutely not the case. The insurance policies and retirement plans offered in the public sector are absolutely not more than the cash compensation of public employees. A state employee that has a gross cash compensation of $7k does not receive anything like $7k in insurance benefits monthly. "Depending on the employee" and "broadly similar". So 69% (private) vs. 92% (state & local gov't) have access to a retirement plan. Yes, that's broadly similar. But for the context of HN readers, who will skew towards "professional and related occupations, " the gap is only 8 points. (Looking at participation doesn't make sense when evaluating jobs because it evaluates what other people do versus what is on offer.) The calculation for medical and life insurance is similar. If you look more closely at the data, it will be obvious that the private sector numbers are dragged down by absolutely shitty jobs that don't pay well and have few benefits. In a sense, it's not reasonable to compare the pool of all private sector workers with state and local employees; the latter are dominated by "better" jobs that are better whether you have them in the public or private sector. In general, an engineering job comes with medical insurance whether that job is working for the state or Google. The other thing that comes out of this data is that we should obviously consider making it so that private sector jobs have a higher floor of benefits so that taxpayers don't have to be the safety net. Instead of wondering why government jobs have such great benefits (they don't, really), we should wonder why so many private sector jobs are dependent on taxpayers picking up the tab for e.g. food stamps for people with full-time employment in the private sector.