The amount of unneccessary jobs that plauge our public sector cannot in any way be compared to the private sector, because the private sector does not throw money away and hire 20 people to do work that could be comepleted by 1 hard working person. Until you are able to find a comperable number of private sector positions that are as inefficient & wasteful as our public paper pushers, than you cannot argue the these public sector workers make less than their private sector counter parts, because their “counter-parts” do not exist. If you actually figured out how much the public sector paper pushers make for the actual neccessary work they do(and no, updating their facebook pages does not count as neccessary work), you will probably see a $-to-task ratio that rivals that of a Brain Surgeon. But have fun with you bogus, union supplied statistics though.

I have taken unwanted “pay cuts” (I am self-employed) of way more than 15% a year since 2008, but I have to do just as much work for the pleasure of less pay. No furlough days off to compensate for the lost income. And, I don’t care if some DMV employee has a college degree in “Art History” or “Liberal Studies” (or Chemical Engineering, for that matter); they “work” at the freaking DMV.

The study by economists at UC Berkeley and Rutgers University found that the similar wages and benefits exist despite the fact that 55 percent of public employees in the state have a college degree, compared with just 35 percent of California’s private sector workers. Education levels are usually the most important factor in determining wages, but public employees do not get the same return for their education level as private sector employees, said co-author Sylvia Allegretto.

Allegretto, deputy chairwoman of UC Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, co-authored the study with Jeffrey Keefe, an associate professor of labor and employment relations at Rutgers University.

Allegretto said the findings should put to rest some of the arguments over high public compensation, which has been a huge issue this election season and one that became particularly acute in California on the heels of a public corruption scandal in the Los Angeles County city of Bell.

“There’s no significant difference between public and private sector workers in California. … It’s basically a wash,” Allegretto said.

5,000 workers studied

The researchers examined the wage and demographic data of 5,000 workers in a monthly household survey conducted in 2009 by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Self-employed, part-time, agricultural and domestic workers were excluded from the sample. Benefit information was culled from the Department of Labor’s Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey.

The study – which says that government workers have been “vilified” in California – concludes that public employees are not overpaid when you make an “apples-to-apples” comparison of employees’ education, experience and other factors that might influence pay.

The study did not compare workers with similar jobs in the private and public sector because its authors felt there were too many differences to draw accurate conclusions. For example, the study notes that there are no private sector police officers or firefighters; and that teachers at a public school face far different challenges than those at a private school.

Instead, the study relied on education levels – “the single most important earnings predictor” – and other factors widely found to affect compensation levels, such as gender, race, ethnicity and disability, to compare the two sectors.

The study determined that public agencies generally pay college-educated workers less than private employers do, and that the differential is greatest for professional employees, lawyers and doctors. But the public sector “also appears to set a floor on compensation,” so less educated public sector workers generally make more than people with the same level of education working for a private company. The study attributed this in part to the fact that “the earnings floor has collapsed in the private sector.”

While public employees make about 7 percent less than their counterparts in private industry, the study found there is virtually no difference between the two sectors once you consider that state and local governments contribute nearly 6 percent more to benefits such as health insurance and retirement funds. But public employees also receive “considerably” less supplemental pay and vacation time, the study found.

Fewer workers today

Allegretto defended public workers, saying that there are 60,000 fewer government workers at the state and local level today than before the economic downturn began.

And she noted that despite the attention being paid by the governor and other politicians this year to rising public pension costs, those costs make up a small fraction of state spending.

“It is important to keep in mind that a huge state like California needs a lot of workers to keep going – and by and large they are highly educated, skilled workers who need to be fairly compensated,” she said. “This tells me that the problems in California certainly could not have been caused by pensions and cannot be cured by pensions.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has repeatedly targeted state employees in budget cuts since February 2009, when he began imposing unpaid furloughs. Soon after, the furloughs were expanded from two to three days a month, amounting to pay cuts of about 15 percent a year. The governor has also often criticized the public employee pension system and has pushed for state workers to contribute more to their own pensions.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/19/MNUJ1FUAOH.DTL#ixzz12pzV0LQi