12 ms·
US Federal Employee Salaries (2012)
- twoodfin 13y agoMaybe I'm missing something, but is there any way to sort or filter this data?
- petsounds 13y agosoon, but not yet... this just went live last night :) clarification edit: this is the end result of a new feature that allows enigma users to publicly share a frozen table state (up to 10 pages), which takes into place the current filter/sort state
- jessepollak 13y agoThis is really awesome. The UI/UX feels a little unapproachable and the feature set seems lacking (what do I do when I get to that page) , but I'm sure it's infinitely better than the alternative. One small thing that's nice is the column summaries: http://cl.ly/image/2D1S2h0o0B09 http://cl.ly/image/2D1S2h0o0B09.
- angersock 13y agoUm.... I know it's probably your core business and all, but from a civic standpoint, would you mind posting the raw data so we can play with it? EDIT: Thanks folks!
- petsounds 13y agosure! we actually posted a link to the raw CSV before we pushed this in the beginning of the shutdown: https://twitter.com/enigma_io/status/385166410063691776 https://twitter.com/enigma_io/status/385166410063691776
- macNchz 13y agoVery cool, thanks! Already having some fun: Location with highest average salary among stations with >25 federal employees: Islip, NY - 496 employees $43,162 min $140,781 avg $179,700 max
- Amadou 13y agoThat looks like Brookhaven National Lab.
- turgidElderly 13y agoNope. BNL is a ~30 minute drive from Islip. BNL is sandwiched between Ridge/Middle Island, Yaphank, and Shorham Wading River (10 minutes from where the aborted SWR nuclear power plant rests). BNL belongs to the township of Brookhaven. Meanwhile, Islip is the home of McCarthur Airport, a medium sized airport that serves the east end of Long Island.
- Amadou 13y agoYou are completely correct. I got Upton confused with Islip.
- asveikau 13y agoMaybe I've lost something in all the details, how is this list compiled? I was born in DC and grew up in the area, as such I know a lot of current federal employees who should be on a 2012 list. I grepped for a handful of names of folks I know personally and so far found only one. (For privacy reasons I will not share the names of non-matches here.) Update: Ok, I've found two now. Still many more non-matches than matches.
- dandelany 13y agoThe data is from this dataset: http://php.app.com/fed_employees11/search.php http://php.app.com/fed_employees11/search.php ...obtained by Asbury Park Press via a FOIA. It doesn’t include FBI, CIA, Defense Department, or IRS employees, or employees involved in security work, nuclear materials or national security matters.
- asveikau 13y agoJudging by some of the names that are missing I am guessing congressional staff is also absent? And similarly, CBO? Edit: Just after your quoted part it says: > does not cover the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, and independent agencies and commissions.
- merinid 13y agoTotally agreed. There is an application for access for civic projects: http://dev.enigma.io/ http://dev.enigma.io/
- yogo 13y agoEven with a ~40K standard dev I'd say that's a well paid lot.
- genericresponse 13y agoYou have to remember that most actual employees are white-collar types. Almost anything commoditizable or blue-collar gets sent to contractors. Also, let's not forget the cost of living in DC.
- phaus 13y agoThe percentage of contractors might be somewhat higher, but there are tons of blue-collar federal positions.
- mcguire 13y agoWeirdly, not on this list. In the raw data[1], the top 4 plan/grades are GS 11-14, which account for 40% (~536,000 of 1.35M) of the entries. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6560459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6560459
- maaku 13y agoMost federal employees aren't in DC.
- petsounds 13y ago~161k are! second only to "N/A": http://cl.ly/image/3U2K232E3102 http://cl.ly/image/3U2K232E3102
- maaku 13y ago~1,189k are not!
- georgemcbay 13y ago
- therobot24 13y agowow a librarian at a GS14 level: [name removed] DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE LIBRARIAN Maryland Prince George's County BELTSVILLE GS 14 119238 I know the GS schedule is based on how long you work as opposed to how well you work, but i didn't think that non-STEM or non-Management roles made above GS11 or 12.
- phaus 13y agoGS isn't based entirely on how long you work. Most positions have a cap. There are also plenty of places that generally don't promote people because the management sucks or they don't have funding. There are also ways to prevent substandard employees from getting promoted. Perhaps the term librarian means something other than what we think it does, like the librarian of congress. Perhaps its a supervisor at an enormous library. I really hope we aren't paying 90k+ for someone to check out books about farming.
- fiatmoney 13y agoI would assume they help keep track of / index the massive amount of government-sponsored agricultural research & data the DoA has generated. "[The Agricultural Research Service] has more than 2,200 permanent scientists working on approximately 1,100 research projects at more than 100 locations", to say nothing of historical data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Research_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Research_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Agricultural_Library http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Agricultural_Library
- Jtsummers 13y agoKeep in mind, it's also not uncommon for those in charge of others to have the same title. That is, in an engineering office the one in charge of a group of 1k engineers is likely an engineer as well, so they'd be a GS-14 or GS-15 electrical engineer. So the person who rose through the ranks of librarians from the lowest level to being in charge of a group of librarians would similarly be a GS-13 or GS-14 librarian.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
- Dirlewanger 13y agoGreat UI, love it. Didn't realize how many cushy jobs the government has...damn. Now I know why my parents kept telling me to look in the public sector first and foremost.
- eli 13y agoNot a very cushy job this month...
- robmcm 13y agoOr very cushy, (if you don't mind not getting paid).
- eli 13y agoI know many people who were furloughed this week and not a single one of them is happy.
- mcguire 13y agoYou can't say that anymore! I'm not a government employee, directly, but I am a contractor that has been furloughed for two weeks now, and I'm happier than I've been in a long while. And no, I won't get back pay; the first two weeks were "administrative leave", which I have to make up (typically with vacation time), and starting this week the charge code is leave without pay. Apparently, my job sucks worse than I thought.
- maaku 13y agoI'm not sure how being out of work without pay is cushy...
- whathappenedto 13y agoThey'll be paid back when the government is no longer shut down. So if you have savings, it's essentially a forced paid vacation.
- kalleboo 13y agoYou could probably make some amazing visualizations of this data. In Sweden, all the tax records are public information. You can literally look up how much your neighbor makes in a year. So each year after tax season, the tabloids all print up huge lists of "the richest people in YOUR neighborhood!". I've always been disappointed that with all this data, they've never gone beyond that and visualized the data geographically.
- csmatt 13y agoI'm not judging one way or another, but is privacy not something the Swedish people are interested in?
- zachsnow 13y agoIf you were Swedish you might not consider it private information. Being from the US I do, but I don't consider my age private. It's difficult to say where a culture should draw the line, in an objective way.
- cmarschner 13y agoHow is that a privacy concern in the US if you find the salaries of over a million people on a government website? I find that a bit disturbing.
- eli 13y agoThis data has obviously been public for a while. A site with Senate/House staff salaries makes the rounds every summer when a new round of Hill interns realize they can look up how much their friends and bosses make.
- petsounds 13y agofor anyone who's interested, i generated a link to this sorted by the base salary (descending): https://bits.enigma.io/s/t/8b6aa881e02d8c2b851a3d5140c263f4 https://bits.enigma.io/s/t/8b6aa881e02d8c2b851a3d5140c263f4 and here's a link to a full export (csv): https://s3.amazonaws.com/enigma-data-export/shutdown/enigma-us-gov-opm-salaries-2012.zip https://s3.amazonaws.com/enigma-data-export/shutdown/enigma-...
- nzealand 13y agoThis does not include federal court employees (judges, attorneys...)
- fpp 13y agoSimilar data, but still mostly limited to higher pay levels and by government department is available for the UK ( see for example: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/staff-organograms-and-pay-department-for-international-development http://data.gov.uk/dataset/staff-organograms-and-pay-departm... ) a side note: It is generally accepted that the US government pays the highest salaries compared to other government agencies worldwide. This is the reason why the U.N. uses the US government scales and pays as their base (highest salaries of all member states) - of course before they put their "gravy" on it and more than double it.
- msh345 13y agoMore importantly, UN salaries are exempt from income tax: https://careers.un.org/lbw/home.aspx?viewtype=SAL https://careers.un.org/lbw/home.aspx?viewtype=SAL
- fpp 13y agoyes, that's on top of the so called post adjustment that for e.g. Geneva (last time I looked) was around 96% (base salary + post adjustment = net salary (+ normal tax rate) -> gross salary in the private sector (30 working days holidays p.a., up to 70% pension levels (17years contribution) with 5 years+ contributions getting you a pension, for senior staff add no VAT, 50% lower petrol prices, real tax & duty free shopping everyday - about half or less your airport shop, etc etc etc) ...and as salaries are normally paid besides tax free also tax equalized (the US is demanding income taxes from all citizens wherever they live including UN staff - the UN covers these taxes for US citizens and a handful other countries) the US pays itself back (via income tax) a nice discount of certainly 10% of its contributions to the UN.
- jonnathanson 13y agoMy understanding is that US government salaries are high because the US private sector pays so well for comparable positions. The US is in the peculiar business of competing with itself, in a sense, or at least with its own economic model. Private vs. public isn't such a teeth-gnashing, nail-biting dilemma for many other countries, who generally seem to do a better job of mentally separating the two sectors. The general agreement in other countries is that public = stable job, lower pay, higher "public service" calling; private = higher salary, less stability, etc. Of course, this isn't taking into account countries like China -- where a government position is the best route into cushy, lucrative gigs in the private sector, and in fact, that's often the entire point. (To some degree, this is also the case in the US, at least at the higher levels of public service.) But I digress.
- everettForth 13y ago"Average 78,673.52 Stand. Deviation 39,191.8525 Max 398,322.00 Min 0.00 Variance 1,536,001,304.3535" I don't think variance is being calculated correctly
- Shivetya 13y agoa fun site to play with is at http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/ http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/
- runamok 13y agoIt would be really interesting to compare this to private sector jobs (where applicable) taking into consideration pension, benefits, etc.
- acdha 13y agoThe confound is that senior federal positions tend to be skewed more towards mid-to-late career due to the push over the last decade or two to hire contractors instead of staff. I don't believe there's any public information available which would help you distinguish that.
- mrcactu5 13y agoit doesn't include bonuses
- petsounds 13y agocheck out the "award bonus" column :)
- coldcode 13y agoOK how do you do anything other that scroll the list?
- avty 13y agoAs we are about to enter a period of hyperinflation, salary is about to sky rocket, led by government employees.
- msh345 13y agoHere are some general stats from OPM on federal employees: http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/reports-publications/profile-of-federal-civilian-non-postal-employees/ http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docum...