It is understandable that private-sector pay has leveled off and even dropped slightly during the recession. Wages have been stagnant, and sadly, many of our people have been laid off.
What is surprising and troubling is that pay increases for federal government workers show no sign of slacking off despite the recession.
A senior fellow for the Mercatus Center, a research organization at George Mason University, looked at the growth in private-sector and federal government pay from 2001 through 2009. She found that average annual private-sector pay rose a little less than 25 percent during that time period – though it fell off some the past year or two during the recession.
By sharp contrast, average federal pay rose by a stunning 38.4 percent during the same time period – and it did not diminish during the recession.
That’s a wide wage spread, especially considering that government doesn’t actually produce anything but must rely for its support on the productivity of the private sector.
What explains the huge wage gap is that government pay is sustained by the taxation of the private sector. Government bureaucrats do not have to please customers to “stay in business,” the way a private business must. Americans who dislike the performance of a federal agency have no option to “shop around” for a more efficient competitor.
And when government workers want more pay, Congress can simply shower more tax dollars on them without a thought for the fact that the private-sector workers from whom those taxes are taken are in extremely difficult circumstances because of the recession.
The reckless expansion of the size of the federal government and of federal worker compensation ought to be of great concern to anyone who is worried about our massive national debt – and about the proper scope of federal power.