Compensation for State and Local Government Workers

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4029052
AutoresMaury Gittleman (0000-0001-6669-2378, Research Economists, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C.), Brooks Pierce (Research Economists, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C.)
Ano2012
Volume26
Fascículo1
Páginas217-242
Data de publicação2012-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of Economic Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0895-3309 • E-ISSN: 1944-7965
EditoraAmerican Economic Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1257/jep.26.1.217
OpenAlexW2137435752
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas24

Are state and local government workers overcompensated? In this paper, we step back from the highly charged rhetoric and address this question with the two primary data sources for looking at compensation of state and local government workers: the Current Population Survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation microdata collected as part of the National Compensation Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In both data sets, the workers being hired in the public sector have higher skill levels than those in the private sector, so the challenge is to compare across sectors in a way that adjusts suitably for this difference. After controlling for skill differences and incorporating employer costs for benefits packages, we find that, on average, public sector workers in state government have compensation costs 3-10 percent greater than those for workers in the private sector, while in local government the gap is 10-19 percent. We caution that this finding is somewhat dependent on the chosen sample and specification, that averages can obscure broader differences in distributions, and that a host of worker and job attributes are not available to us in these data. Nonetheless, the data suggest that public sector workers, especially local government ones, on average, receive greater remuneration than observably similar private sector workers. Overturning this result would require, we think, strong arguments for particular model specifications, or different data

Business · Census · Demographic economics · Dismissal · Economic growth · Economics · Labour economics · Local government · Political science · Population · Private sector · Public sector · Public use · Remuneration · Wages and salaries · Workers' compensation · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Housing Market and Economics · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Law · Public Administration · Finance