Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C. — The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report today on federal pay and total compensation confirms the position long held by NTEU that the education levels and professional occupations of federal employees account for the differences noted time and time again in compensations surveys and studies attempting to compare federal and private-sector jobs.

Additionally, NTEU believes the jobs-to-jobs comparison by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the most appropriate method available of examining the differences between federal and private sector pay. BLS uses the more accurate comparison of actual job duties as opposed to employee characteristics, which CBO examined.

“While the CBO is an expert on budget scoring, the Bureau of Labor Statistics—which finds a consistent pay gap in comparable public and private sector jobs in favor of the private sector—is the expert in wage and compensation comparisons,” said Tony Reardon, National President of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

“While many private sector employers have eliminated or slashed health insurance and retirement benefits, especially for lower-paid employees, there is no justification for the federal government to join this race to the economic bottom,” the NTEU president said. “The government, as any responsible business should, must continue to provide basic benefits such as paid sick leave, health insurance coverage and retirement benefits to all its workers.”

The report notes that low pay raises over the past few years for federal employees coupled with the increased amount new federal hires are paying in retirement contributions will further reduce the pay of federal employees over time—a point NTEU has previously made. CBO also qualifies its findings by noting that the increased retirement contributions are not factored into its analysis because employees hired after 2012 have not worked long enough to receive defined benefit payments.

The federal workforce is the most highly-educated and highly-specialized workforce in the country, employing doctors, lawyers, economists, even rocket scientists, who could earn more in the private sector. In the private sector, workers without college degrees would include service industry jobs which do not exist in the federal sector.

“While news reports portray federal benefits as generous, federal employees do not receive paid dental or vision health insurance, nor do they get rich off their federal pensions or receive the kinds of monetary and non-monetary perks their counterparts in the private sector receive such as paid maternity leave, bonuses and stock options and incentive trips,” said Reardon. “Any statements describing federal jobs as having “greater security” is a joke given the kind of budgets and workforce reductions the Administration is focused on,” stated Reardon.   

NTEU represents 150,000 employees at 31 federal agencies and departments.