Q&A of the Day – Job Security for Public vs. Private Sector Employees
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Submitted via talkback. Asking about the difference in job security between government vs. Private sector employees.
Bottom Line: The public vs. private sector employment debate isn’t a new one, it’s long been an on again off again debate – however in the era of DOGE, it’s become a front burner conversation that’s coming to a head. It prompted my recent story – Workforce Realities from PBC to Washington D.C. In it I mentioned this: 16.4 million. Over 40% of people in the workforce right now have been forced to change jobs at least once. What’s more is that 23% of people in the workforce have been pushed out the door three or more times during their career. As unpleasant as it can be – firings, layoffs, are an entirely normal thing. In the private sector that is. What does the 16.4 million number represent? That’s how many people were fired/laid off within the private sector last year. That’s right, about 45,000 people per day are made to pursue new opportunities or perhaps are even forced to change careers – that is in the real world. And of the greater than 16 million layoffs last year, about a million of them happened in Florida.
In other words, everyday an average of 3,300+ Floridians working in the private sector are fired/laid off each of the 365 days a year. Also, of note in this conversation is this not-so-insignificant detail: What do you think the average total annual compensation is for the federal government employee? The answer is $143,643. How about in the private sector most recently? For the average full-time, 40-hour employee, the total compensation value was $92,352, or 36% less than the average federal government employee. Details like that add to the frustrations of those like the listener who submitted today’s Q&A. Let’s break this down further...
- The average length of time a federal government employee stays in a job: 11.8 years
- The average length of time all public sector employees (state and local) stay in a job is 6.2 years
- The average tenure of a fulltime private sector employees is 3.9 years
Clearly there’s a considerable difference in job stability between the two. Now, some of that is by choice of course. It’s far more common for job hopping to occur in the private sector than the government sector, but much of it is also due to employees being forced to find new work. The 16.4 million private sector employees who were laid off last year represented 12.1% of private sector employees – meaning that annually a private sector employee has a greater than 1 in 10 chance of losing their job. That figure is below 1% within federal agencies. That in large part due to how hard it is to fire federal employees.
Under what’s known as Title 5, federal employees are granted a host of protections against termination. They include:
- At least 30 days' notice being provided
- Employees having an opportunity to respond
- Employees having a right during this time to seek legal representation
- Employees being entitled to a performance improvement plan
As most in the private sector know, often there’s no advance notice of termination – let alone the rest of it. This is why the rapid move by DOGE to eliminate 200,000+ jobs, or just under 10% of the federal workforce has come as a shock to the establishment. The irony is that what DOGE has done still hasn’t equaled what’s a standard operating procedure in the private sector in a typical year.
So, to sum it up, federal government employees, until the era of DOGE, had enjoyed job security that was greater than 12x that of the average private sector employee with 36% higher total compensation.
Now, it’s worth noting that there are many outstanding federal government employees, many that perform essential services for our country, and for that matter they shouldn’t be blamed for pushing back against the changes being sought. It’s what Congress put in place a long time ago and most people in a similar situation would likely attempt to use all tools available to them to protect their interests. At the same time the frustrations expressed by many in the private sector, who generally earn considerably less and have far less job security, is also understandable. What we’re seeing with DOGE is what happens when the public sector is presented with private sector styled oversight and expectations.