How much federal employees earn and how much you pay them
Bottom Line: Predictably the “woe is the federal employee” stories are ramping up and the noise is becoming louder as folks are getting back into a normal routine after the holidays with the partial government shutdown continuing. You can almost feel the desire of the MSM to make you care about the partial government shutdown. This because most Americans haven’t felt any impact from a quarter of the federal government being out of operation. They can’t have that now, can they?
To be clear I don’t have any animus towards rank and file federal government employees and it’s not my desire to stick it to them. I blame our politicians for our wasteful and bloated federal government – not the people we pay to work in it. But that’s the larger point here. They work for us, not the other way around despite the way it’s portrayed in news media. In the real-world companies go bankrupt and people lose jobs through layoffs every day. Literally every day in this country somewhere that happens. But you don’t see the MSM tracking those folks down attempting to make federal government employees feel guilty about getting paid at the literal expense of the people who’re just laid off. That’s the rest of the story and the real America and it’s why I’ll never fall into that ubiquitous trap.
The average income in the US was $48,976 as of December. Keep that number in mind as you hear these figures. Average federal compensation now averages more than $128,000 per federal employee per year. That’s right, the person making less than $50,000 per year is supporting someone who works for them yet earns in excess of twice what they make. Does that really make sense to you? But wait there’s more. The average federal employee works 12% fewer hours than you do as well based on research from the Foundation for Economic Education. I’ll put this one more way that literally hits home to you.
The cost per household for just federal employees per year is $15,200. That’s how much you’re paying them to do whatever it is they do. Now, a quarter of the federal government is shutdown. Here’s the get real moment. If you had a choice between retaining an extra $3,800 this year or having these non-essential federal employees go back to work which would you choose? Seriously, this is a real question. That’s what this gets down to. It’s just not what the MSM tells you – it's the truth.