Are Federal Workers Overpaid?

Today is just another average day. As I was checking my email, this was one of the stories that popped up in Yahoo! news. Here's a link to it from the AP:

FACT CHECK: Are Federal Workers Overpaid?

It's an interesting story, so you should go read it. It says the average Federal worker earns more than the average worker in the private sector. Ah, but here's the catch. They're comparing "Apples and Oranges" and that never works.

For example, the article notes that a "disproportionate number of federal employees are professionals, such as managers, lawyers, engineers and scientists." Many of the lower paid federal jobs such as clerical or service jobs have been outsourced to private sector.

So of course, on the average, scientists would make more money that someone working in the mail room.

But when you compare salaries of comparable jobs, such as lawyer to lawyer, it is often the case that the private sector pays more than the Federal Government. And the more that continues, the more likely the best people will leave government jobs and go to the private sector. That's good for them, but perhaps not so good for all of us. We should want our brightest people working for us. That just makes sense.

But here is why I even put this posting about Federal Workers here. It immediately reminded me of my 7th Grade Math teacher, Mr. Gustafson. He was a neat guy and a good teacher. He talked about a book way back then that I still remember and in fact I purchased that book a few years back.

That book is "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff. Now don't stop reading just because you think you don't like statistics. This is a short book and really interesting. You can still buy this book and you should consider it. You can read the book in one evening and it is important when you think of all the statistics thrown at us every day. We make decisions based on those statistics and we should be interested in making good, sound decisions.

The whole point of the AP article about fact checking the pay of Federal workers was in the use of "average". (Note the title of my blog: Mean, Median, Mode, Just an Average Blog.) You can use averages to get an idea of the whole picture of something, but you need to do it in a mathematically meaningful and honest way.

Here's a few more links about the book, "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff.

Book review by Jim Loy that lists the chapters in the book.

Barnes & Noble information to order this book.

Now, go buy that book and read it. Or if nothing else, take everything you hear about averages with a grain of salt. Otherwise you might be tempted to believe me when I say that, on the average, my blog is the best blog on the internet.