All Articles Tagged "government jobs"
Counting the Money: Government Pay is Better Than The Private Sector
There’s still nothing like a government job. According to CNN Money, the Congressional Budget Office put out a report to compare which one’s better: a government or a private sector job. While income is dependent on education level, for the most part, working for the government is the way to go.
For those of you considering making a switch between the two sectors or looking for a job wherever you can find one, it’s important to note that it all boils down to benefits. For those with a high school diploma, government jobs not only pay 21 percent more than those working in the private sector, they have a substantially superior benefits package that is worth about 72 percent more.
Employees with a bachelor’s degree can expect to each about the same hourly wage in both the federal and private-sector. But federal workers make about 46 percent more from benefits. An employee with a master’s degree will also fare better working in government.
When it comes to those with advanced degrees such as law degrees and PhDs, the numbers switch. Government workers with law degrees and other higher education degrees make about 23 percent less than they would in the private sector and the benefit packages are about the same.
Unfortunately for those looking specifically for a government job, the competition is stiff. Civilian government employees make up less than two percent of the US workforce. If you want to try your luck, http://www.usajobs.gov/ is the best place to start.
Local Woman Fighting for Equality in the Workplace
(Afro) — A local woman is working hard to get more equality in federal jobs as she believes the government is closing doors on opportunities for minorities. “I felt that Black federal employees, that were brave enough to take on the injustices that were happening to us, needed to have an advocacy group to actually expose what’s going on in the federal government,” said Tanya Ward Jordan, founder of the Coalition for Change (C4C). Jordan founded C4C in 2009 after taking part in a class action suit against the Department of Commerce that was settled out of court. Jordan says part of the problem lies in the sheer number of opportunities not given to minorities.
Budget Cuts Imperil Black Middle Class
(New York Times) — What will the shrinking of the public sector mean for the black middle class? The black unemployment rate nationwide is 16.2 percent, far higher than the 8.7 percent rate for whites. Yet nearly 20 percent of black workers are employed by the government, according to numbers cited in an article by the political scientist Walter Russell Mead. With states and cities under pressure to cut back spending on public employees, what effect might lower benefits, and fewer jobs, have on the economic prospects for African-Americans in particular?
Charles Rangel: Gov’t Cuts Will Hurt Blacks Most
(The Hill) – Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Thursday morning that government spending cuts will end up hurting African Americans disproportionately. In comments on the House floor, Rangel warned blacks would be disproportionately affected because many African-Americans have sought work in the public sector for reasons related to job security.
Gov’t Workers Happiest Employees
(Huffington Post) — Recently in a survey, nearly one in three expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs. But according to theGallup-Healthways survey, it’s private-sector workers that are more likely to be discontent. In a recently published index measuring worker well-being in 2010 in different economic sectors, Gallup surveyed 183,992 workers throughout the 2010 year. Gallup compiled data on each surveyed worker’s health, habits and working environment.
Blacks Suffer Most When Uncle Sam Lays Off
(Huffington Post) — Kenneth Mathis is the kind of man who values stability. More than three decades ago, when he was 19, Mathis was hired by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a government position that seemed to confer assurance of middle class comforts. As an African American, he figured a job with a government agency would be a way around “the good old boy networks” that seemed to preclude his employment at many private businesses. He reckoned that a government job would spare him from the volatility faced by private companies, meaning his paycheck would continue through good times and bad. Mathis later took a job that kept him at home in Houston, joining the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, a position that he figured would last until retirement. But his vision of a steady career culminating in a farewell cake and a pension came to an abrupt end last August, when his boss summoned him into his office, closed the door and told him that his job was being eliminated.
Gray Proposes $100k Salary Cap Lift for Top Brass
(Washington Examiner) — D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has asked the D.C. Council to pass a bill that would raise the annual salary cap for top administration officials by $100,000. The mayor’s request comes amid council hearings into his hiring decisions that have, in part, focused on the higher than legal salaries handed out to high-ranking members of his administration. ”I don’t think this was a nefarious move,” Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh told The Washington Examiner following a hearing on the bill. “But somebody is tone deaf.” During Friday’s hearing, Cheh said, “for the bill to anywhere, it has to go through this committee. There’s no way the part of the bill that sets up high compensation is making it out of this committee.” In other words, Cheh said, “the bill is, how do they say? DOA.”
Va., Md. in Top 10 for Adding Gov't Jobs in Past Decade
(Washington Business Journal) — Big government got even bigger in Maryland and Virginia over the past decade, but the trend appears to be changing in Maryland at least. Virginia added 77,300 government jobs between April 2001 and April 2011, ranking it No. 4 for adding jobs nationwide, according to an On Numbers study of employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It counted 714,400 government jobs as of April 2011.
Budget Cuts Cut into Public Employees’ Pensions
(New York Times) — When an arbitrator ruled this month that Detroit could reduce the pensions being earned by its police sergeants and lieutenants, it put the struggling city at the forefront of a growing national debate over whether the pensions of current public workers can or should be reduced. Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have long held that the pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. But as the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states from California to Illinois have begun to take a second look, to see whether there might be loopholes allowing them to cut the pension benefits of current employees. Now the move in Detroit — made possible, lawyers said, because Michigan’s constitutional protections are weaker — could spur other places to try to follow suit. “These things do tend to be herd-oriented,” said Sylvester J. Schieber, an economist and consultant who studies pensions. The mayors of some hard-hit cities have said that the high costs of pensions have forced them to lay off workers: Oakland, Calif., laid off one-tenth of its police force last year after failing to win concessions on pension costs.
Fed Employees Worried They’ll Pay Highest Price for a Shutdown
(Washington Examiner) — Federal employees in the Washington region say their biggest fear as the threat of a government shutdown looms is that they and their families ultimately will be forced to pay for Congress’ impasse. Longtime employees who experienced the 1995 shutdown that lasted 26 days — much of it during the holiday season — said this one scares them more because their household budgets are already tight. And on top of that, the government budget has been tight and likely will be getting tighter. ”We don’t know anything — we don’t know if we’ll get paid, we don’t know if we’ll keep our homes,” said a 20-year employee for U.S. Customs and Border Protection who declined to give his name. The three-week budget extension passed in March is set to expire Friday. Many of the region’s 150,000 federal employees believe they won’t be paid their salaries retroactively as they were in 1995 because of the political pressure to slash the government budget. Many employees interviewed Tuesday said they could weather a few days or a week on an unpaid furlough. But most said missing more than a couple weeks’ pay would be a huge financial setback as they try to pay their bills.
