Federal employees salary is now public and searchable

Federal employee search

I searched salaries of people holding similar positions as me and I am miffed... They earn at least 20 % more than me and they have a cushy govt job while I slog day in and day out

Public sector used to pay less than private sector, but the trade-off was greater job security. Now public sector is the best of all worlds. Let's put the government in charge of everything!

edit: click "red" if you have a sarcasm-detection impairment

It doesnt list DoD, the biggest bureaucracy.

"Barack Obama" yields no results.

IrishTomBunny said:   madcowdisease said:   "Barack Obama" yields no results.

Perhaps you didn't read that White House isn't listed. And his pay is public record. And it's the same as George W. Bush.

Just noticed that. I know what the President's salary is, would just be interesting to see it in the db.

wow, i didn't know this was public record. LOL and getting sick at the same time.

APP used to be just NJ, now they went national.

"Employees involved in security work, the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, nuclear materials, IRS, and jobs essential to national security are excluded. The list contains most executive branch employees but does not cover the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, and independent agencies and commissions."

Darn it... I wanted to know how "little" those Secret Service guys make to justify ripping off the hooker that got them busted.

Generally, for lower level positions (i.e. receptionist, tree trimmer), the Government (as they use the term) pays more. For professional positions, and positions that require substantial skills, the Government can pay less than state and local government. If I took my GS-11 equivalent position in civil engineering and worked for the Government, instead of for my California-based special district, I would take a 20% pay cut, even accounting for equivalent experience and time in grade. and the correct locality pay schedule for my area. The benefits also differ and are often less in the feds (i.e., you will never get Black Friday as a holiday).

You can get post office salaries here: postal salaries. look up your mailman's salary. You might be shocked at how much they earn for carrying mail. Then look up your local post office manager and postmaster. I think you will be shocked at how much these people make.

Also, I looked at the salary of one person I know in federal service (not post office) and I feel she is underpaid for what she does.

Wow. As a former federal employee (who, by the way, took a significant pay cut when I went into federal service, and a significant pay increase when I left), I'm kind of mortified by this. I've looked up a few of my former colleagues and am shocked to see that one of my colleagues is apparently a significantly lower step than I had expected. She is essentially the co-head of an important unit and does a lot of important work, but I was paid significantly more than her despite the fact that I wasn't nearly as important to the organization (she was hired after I was by a new, and less generous, manager). I was tempted to forward the site to her, but I'm worried it would cause friction if they knew about it.

As has been noted, the salaries for various grades, steps, and localities has been public knowledge for a long time. It feels really invasive, though, for any random person with Internet access to be able to enter a name and see their exact salary.

calwatch said:   Generally, for lower level positions (i.e. receptionist, tree trimmer), the Government (as they use the term) pays more. For professional positions, and positions that require substantial skills, the Government can pay less than state and local government. If I took my GS-11 equivalent position in civil engineering and worked for the Government, instead of for my California-based special district, I would take a 20% pay cut, even accounting for equivalent experience and time in grade. and the correct locality pay schedule for my area. The benefits also differ and are often less in the feds (i.e., you will never get Black Friday as a holiday).

But you're in CA, the cost of living is so high the job pay is higher too. Or is that the other way around? And the reality is CA runs continuously over budget like the Feds, although probably not to the same extent.

::looks up salary of friends::

Civil Servant.

wp746911 said:   If I hear 'civil servant' ever again in my life i'm gonna blow my brains out.

http://www.legistorm.com/salaries.html

Congressional Staffer Salaries.

vegetation said:   Yawn, nothing new here. GS pay scales always been available along with position descriptions for every position in the government with corresponding grades.The GS pay scales don't necessarily tell you all that much though. There are locality adjustments, so that a person at the same GS level and step in one state may be getting a very different salary from the person in another state.

For higher level positions (GS-15), the GS pay can also amount to just a percentage of the total compensation, as many of them are also supplemented through the "market pay" component (I am actually not sure whether "market pay" is always reflected in the above database, so the upper level position salaries may or may not be accurate).

mnsweeps said:   Federal employee search

I searched salaries of people holding similar positions as me and I am miffed... They earn at least 20 % more than me and they have a cushy govt job while I slog day in and day out

thx for the link mnsweeps. really good to know (also really creepy that that info is out there and so easily searchable).

the key is not to compare yourself to others. it's a losing battle. there will inevitably be someone who's less deserving who makes more money. platitudes, i know. but when i close my eyes and say it hard enough, it seems to help

jeeves said:   What are the benefits? Am I right assuming that is also going to be heads and shoulders above private sector?

This is unbelievable and this is after two years of supposed pay freeze!!!Federal employee benefits are all online, along with their costs.

Whether or not the benefits are head and shoulders better than in the private sector really depends on your private employer. With the federal government, you'll have a ton of health insurance options at good but not amazing rates. The federal government does not subsidize dental or vision coverage at all, so that's just an okay deal (it's a better deal than buying it on your own because the feds have bulk negotiating power, but if your private company subsidizes your dental coverage, it will generally be cheaper than the federal one).

The federal government provides a nice but not an amazing retirement match. It gives you access to the TSP (the federal equivalent of a 401(k)), which is incredibly cheap, but doesn't have a lot of options. For healthy employees, buying life insurance through the federal government is insanely expensive. It provides you the standard dependent care and health care FSA, which are also provided by most private companies.

Depending on your position and when you started, the federal government will probably be contributing to a retirement annuity on your behalf. You forfeit the entire benefit if you stay less than 5 years and it only becomes a decent benefit if you stay there essentially your entire career.

SangioveseW said:   jeeves said:   This is unbelievable and this is after two years of supposed pay freeze!!!As others pointed out above, some positions are overpaid and some are grossly underpaid.

What positions are grossly underpaid?

jeeves said:   SangioveseW said:   jeeves said:   This is unbelievable and this is after two years of supposed pay freeze!!!As others pointed out above, some positions are overpaid and some are grossly underpaid.

What positions are grossly underpaid?There are actually quite a few upper level positions that are grossly underpaid. Doctors, lawyers, upper level researchers, etc..., but even then it depends on the exact position, location, the person's experience and the demand in the marketplace.

If you've been following the news, for example, there is a big controversy right now that surrounds the VA, which apparently faces a rather severe employee shortgage caused by the fact that its salaries have not kept up with the private market.

elektronic said:   sage1166 said:   
The DoD numbers in the table likely do not include any of the thousands of contractors doing DoD work. Skewed is an understatement.

I'm confused. Most of the federal government budget is transfered to the private sector.

Only about 15% of the budget is personnel costs. It is targetted by Congress as a cost cutting measure because the majority of those affected are in the DC metro area. This way they can cut the budget without going after money flowing to businesses in your constituency. It'll have the added benefit of less scrutiny on their constituent's contracts (if the federal workforce shrinks, but the rest of the budget does not, the quality of contract management will go down).

The % of the population employed by the federal government is pretty low already, relative to history. Highest civilian employment was during the Reagan years:

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince...

Actually most federal employees are not in the DC Metro. About 85 percent are elsewhere. They just happen to be the most visible concentration and include many of the most senior agency officials.

The contractor shell game has been going on since Reagan. Reagan declared war on the federal government, and needed to show a reduction in employees. They just became contractors. At the end of the Cold War, the government started to farm out even more work (like HR) to help ease the pain of reduced (or so was the thought at the time) defense spending.

Ultimately a contractor is paid the same or more than a federal employee, plus the government pays for contracting company to "provide" that resource. So take your GS-13 and tack on another 15% for Booz Allen Hamilton's overhead costs, and maybe another 5% for the higher salary the contractor may demand. Yet contracting is always about "saving tax payer dollars". These aren't open and shut projects either, they will be contracted in perpetuity unless it is insourced.