California’s Government Workers Make TWICE As Much as Private Sector Workers

Earlier today the California Policy Center released a study that provided facts about government compensation. It examined state and local payroll data provided online by the California State Controller and proved that the average pay and benefits for a full-time state/local government employee in 2015 was $121,843.

At the same time, the study found that the average pay and benefits for a full-time private sector worker in California in 2015 was half that much, $62,475.

Moreover, the study found that if the pensions these state/local workers have been promised were being properly funded, their actual pay and benefits in 2015 would have averaged $139,691. And that elevated figure still didn’t take into account the impact of properly pre-funding their supplemental retirement health care, nor did it normalize for their myriad paid days off – typically including 14 paid holidays, 12 “personal days” and 20 or more vacation days as they acquire seniority. And let’s not forget the “9/80” program, common in California government but virtually unheard of in the private sector, where public sector salaried professionals can skip a few lunches and show up a few minutes early or depart a few minutes late each workday, and take 26 additional days a year off with pay because, every two weeks, they worked “nine hour days for nine days, then took the tenth day off.”

If you’re not counting, that adds up to 72 days off per year with pay for a seasoned public sector professional. The study didn’t take that into account.

Similarly, the study had to assume that fully 50% of full time private sector workers in California are getting excellent comprehensive health care coverage 100% paid for by their employer, a 3% employer matching payment to a 401K retirement savings account, along with making employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare (and even that does not occur for the millions of independent contractors working full-time in California). But the study made the 50% assumption just to ensure that the average, $62,475 per year, was not understated.

Finally please note that in the public sector, the study found that the differences between “average” and “median” total compensation are negligible, with the median often actually exceeding the average. Not true in the private sector, where the impact of ultra-wealthy individuals truly skews the average well above the median.

So welcome to Feudal California, where crippling taxes and regulations are destroying the middle class, while a burgeoning dependent class pays no taxes, and hence votes for every tax proposal they see. Welcome to Feudal California, where the super rich support policies designed to create asset bubbles that make them richer, and don’t care about taxes because they’re so rich they can pay them.

It’s not enough to merely point out the fact that government workers make twice as much as ordinary workers in California, and that the gap is widening. The problem is that the unions who represent government workers control policy in California, and those policies are the reason private sector workers can’t get ahead. Every major policy in effect or being contemplated in California is designed to raise the cost-of-living, and while the private sector middle class is crushed, the unionized government workers make twice as much, which is enough to survive.

At the same time, the challenges posed by a high cost-of-living are almost entirely regressive, harming the poor disproportionately. It doesn’t matter to a wealthy person if their gasoline costs $2.50 vs. $4.50 per gallon, or their electricity costs $.04 per KWH vs. $.40 per KWH. It doesn’t matter to them if a home costs $150,000 or $650,000. They’re rich. They can afford it.

So instead of fighting to lower the cost-of-living, California’s wealthy elite makes common cause with government unions, working to create artificial scarcity. This creates asset bubbles that translate into more property tax revenue for governments, more investment returns for the pension funds, and gilds the portfolios of the wealthy. And if anyone objects, they’re “deniers.”

California’s elites – wealthy individuals and their government union allies – have cleverly employed the politics of race, gender, and environmentalism to enthrall millions. California’s citizens, by and large, have become convinced that identity grievances and extreme environmentalism matter more than the fact they are in debt to their eyeballs, living from paycheck to paycheck. In a brilliant inversion of reality, these feudal overlords have actually convinced Californians to attribute the reasons for their poverty to race and gender discrimination, rather than economic policies that have made it nearly impossible for anyone to be upwardly mobile – regardless of their race or gender.

The public sector union leadership that runs California is incorrigible. They have bribed their members, and they have convinced their victims to enthusiastically support a political agenda that itself is the real reason they are victims.

Ed Ring is the vice president of research policy for the California Policy Center.