New Federal Pay Data

The Bureau of Economic Analysis just released its annual data on employee compensation by industry. (See tables 6.2, 6.3, 6.5, and 6.6).

The new data for 2006 show that 1.8 million federal civilian workers earned an average $111,180 in total compensation (wages plus benefits). That is more than double the $55,470 average earned by U.S. workers in the private sector.

Looking just at wages, federal workers earned an average $73,406, which is 60 percent greater than the $45,995 average earned by private sector workers.

Average federal pay has soared in recent years, growing much faster than private sector pay between 2001 and 2005. However, federal pay growth slowed in 2006, while private sector pay accelerated. As a result, average compensation for federal civilians grew 4.0 percent in 2006, compared to the average in the private sector of 4.2 percent.

Hopefully, federal pay increases will continue slowing to help relieve the soaring taxpayer costs of federal workers. I've proposed freezing federal pay to help reduce the deficit and privatizing expensive activities such as air traffic control.

The BEA data show that compensation for federal civilian workers cost taxpayers $203 billion in 2006, up from $145 billion in 2001 when President Bush took office. (The costs of military compensation have grown even more rapidly, from $98 billion in 2001 to $156 billion in 2006).

The acceleration of federal compensation is clear in the figure below covering 1990-2006.

For further information, see

https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6611

https://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0605-35.pdf

(Data note: The BEA data for number of employees is measured in full-time equivalents.)