Four myths about US federal staff
DUE TO an acrimonious budget battle in Washington, the federal government endured the longest shutdown in its history last month - and then spent most of this past week teetering on the brink of yet another closure. But what does the American public know about the people who carry out the day-to- day functions of their government? A number of myths persist about the federal workforce. Here are a few.
Myth No. 1: Federal employees earn more than private- sector workers.
Are the people who dedicate their professional lives to public service in it for the money? “The federal government pays its employees more than they would earn in the private sector,” the Heritage Foundation contends. Last year, a group called American Transparency sought to shock observers with its finding that “there is a new ‘minimum wage’ for federal bureaucrats - at 78 departments and independent agencies, the average employee made US$ 100,000 or more.” Former congressman Dennis Ross, R-Florida, once opposed raising pay for this workforce by arguing, “Our taxpayers can no longer be asked to foot the bill for these federal employees while watching their own salaries remain fl at and their benefits erode.”
But these are misleading fi gures, and the groups that purvey them often overlook some important facts: Salary comparisons aren’t useful because “federal workers tend to be older, more educated, and more concentrated in professional occupations than privatesector workers,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. What’s more, there are comparatively few part-time workers in the government. Some federal employees make more, and some make less, than private-sector workers, but when comparing apples to apples, only federal employees with just a high school diploma make more than their private- sector counterparts, while professionals with advanced degrees usually make less, according to the CBO. This may bode well for Ross: He traded in his congressional salary for one as a lobbyist at one of Florida’s top- earning law fi rms.
Myth No. 2: The federal workforce is mostly located in Washington.
“For many Americans, the idea of a ‘government shutdown’ brings to mind empty desks and hardship in Washington, D.C.,” began a recent NBC News report. The mistaken assumption that most federal employees live and work in the nation’s capital gets a boost from the common political shorthand decrying civil servants as out of touch: Officials such as former House speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Rep Greg Walden, R- Oregon, have bemoaned “unelected bureaucrats in Washington.” “Imagine regulators having to rub elbows with the people being regulated,” noted one pundit. “There’s a lot of wisdom outside the Washington bubble.”
In reality, the vast majority of federal workers are based outside the Washington area. In a piece surveying major hubs for this workforce, The Washington Post explained that “only about one in six of the 1.87 million civilian full-time federal employees live in the Washington, D.C. metro area.” Federal News Network recently highlighted Texas as home to a large federal worker population, adding that “more federal employees work in California, for example, than the District of Columbia, Virginia or Maryland.”
Myth No. 3: The government is shrinking. Trump kicked off his administration with a hiring freeze.
He said he did not want to fill a number of vacant positions and insisted, “You don’t need all of those people.” His initial efforts prompted headlines like this one in the Daily Wire: “Donald Trump Is Shrinking The Government. Everything Else Is Noise,” along with a breathless pronouncement from Forbes that “what we are watching is the final throes of the end of the era of Big Government.”
But there’s scant evidence to support these assertions. According to Paul Light, an expert on the federal workforce, the number of federal jobs has remained relatively constant over the past several decades. (As the US population has grown - and, with it, the number of jobs - government employees have gradually become a smaller percentage of the nation’s workforce.) Reported changes during the Trump administration don’t appear to reverse this trend significantly, with a minor reduction of fewer than 16,000 civilian positions (out of nearly 2.1 million) in 2017 and a minor increase of 10,000 uniformed personnel (out of 1.3 million) in 2018.Trump’s own 2019 budget proposal would have slightly increased the federal workforce if Congress had passed it.
In one way, the government’s workforce has grown, thanks largely to privatisation: Although the CBO says their precise number can’t be calculated, the ranks of government contractors have grown explosively. The Congressional Research Service says the government committed more than a half-trillion dollars for contracts in 2017, and The Post notes that services make up 80 per cent of federal contract dollars. According to Light, the number of contractors more than doubled between 1999 and 2010.
Myth No. 4: The private sector delivers more value for the money.
Some say privatising government yields better value for our tax dollars. Last year, Trump unsuccessfully floated privatising the Postal Service.” It is no longer appropriate to avoid having foundational discussions about services that might be better served by direct State, local, or even private- sector stewardship ,” said a report from the Office of Management and Budget. In early 2017, Government Executive, a trade publication, suggested that Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee “believe work can be done cheaper in the private sector.”