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For decades, public sector unions have peddled the fantasy that government employees were paid less than their counterparts in the private sector. In fact, the pay disparity is the other way around. Government workers, especially at the federal level, make salaries that are scandalously higher than those paid to private sector workers. And let's not forget private sector workers not only have to be sufficiently productive to earn their paychecks, they also must pay the taxes that support the more generous jobs in the public sector.

For decades, public sector unions have peddled the fantasy that government employees were paid less than their counterparts in the private sector. In fact, the pay disparity is the other way around. Government workers, especially at the federal level, make salaries that are scandalously higher than those paid to private sector workers. And let's not forget private sector workers not only have to be sufficiently productive to earn their paychecks, they also must pay the taxes that support the more generous jobs in the public sector.

At a time when workers pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

This comes from Business Insider, and it provides a natural follow-up to my post from last week as to why public-sector workers are more optimistic than private-sector employees. For the first time, the US has more government workers than goods-producing workers:

You’ve heard of no fly and no buy lists – get ready for no work lists. Millions of workers now must apply to the DHS and prove they are not terrorists in order to be granted permission by the government to work. TWIC “is a biometric credential that ensures only vetted workers are eligible to enter a secure construction site, unescorted,” Ironworkers Local 361 in Ozone Park, New York, explains. In other words, construction workers in New York will need permission from the TSA and DHS in order to practice their profession and earn a living. SWAC is even more draconian.

In three straight recent weekly addresses, Republicans have asserted that “excessive government regulations” are keeping businesses from creating jobs.

On the contrary, recent government data proves that in the third quarter of 2010 only 0.4 percent of jobs were lost due to government regulations or intervention.

With the regional and municipal governments deeply in debt, even workers like bus drivers and health care attendants, dependent on government financing for their salaries, are not always paid. But few workers in this situation believe they have any choice but to stick it out, and none wanted to name their employers, to protect both the companies and their jobs. They try to manage their lives with occasional checks and partial payments on random dates — never sure whether they will get what they are owed in the end.

In California, a special program was designed to guard the safety of peace officers and judges by keeping their addresses private to protect them from criminals.
The program has since expanded to include legislators, city council members, county supervisors, prison employees, trial court workers, parking officers, Child Protective Services social workers, national park rangers, other groups, and their spouses and children, and even after they are no longer public employees.

census workers — from the head of the Bureau and the Secretary of Commerce (its parent agency) down to the lowliest and newest Census employee — are empowered under federal law to actually demand access to any apartment or any other type of home or room that is rented out, in order to count persons in the abode and for “the collection of statistics.” If the landlord of such apartment or other leased premises refuses to grant the government worker access to your living quarters, whether you are present or not, the landlord can be fined $500.00.