December 12, 2016
An October survey of government workers revealed that 27 percent of them would consider quitting if Donald Trump became president, with another 9 percent unsure if they’d quit. Trump said he’d make government smaller and he might just have to show up on day one for it to happen!
Of course, such a scenario will not materialize because government workers have it too good.
In terms of total compensation, federal workers are more handsomely compensated than their private-sector counterparts. By how much? The number may surprise you. According to the Cato Institute, government workers make 76% more on average than private sector employees!
On top of that, at the federal level they’re nearly perfect (pdf) – as in 99.5 percent of them are “fully successful” in terms of work performance ratings. Another 0.4 percent are “minimally successful.”
So that means 99.9 percent of government workers are successful…really?
Here are a few examples of work that would not qualify as “fully successful” in my book.
The healthcare.gov website cost $2 billion and didn’t fully work when launched. More than $100 billion was overpaid to government beneficiaries last year. And I don’t think the TSA and VA are shining examples of success.
But people aren’t being fired over these “successes.” Instead they get paid leave. There’s no incentive to change, and as we’ve seen over time, it’s only leading to larger budgets.