Federal Pay Debate Continues

The federal pay debate is front and center on Capitol Hill today, as the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the federal workforce holds a hearing on whether federal employees earn more than their private sector counterparts.

Witnesses at the hearing include Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley, both of whom stand by the government's calculations that federal workers earn 24 percent less than their private sector counterparts. Critics of these calculations, like James Sherk, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, also will testify.

My colleague Kellie Lunney writes in a preview of the hearing that Sherk, whose research found that federal employees on average earn hourly wages 22 percent higher than those in the private sector, will argue that across-the-board pay cuts like the one called for by the Obama administration for the next two years "unfairly penalize those federal employees who are not overpaid while still leaving others with premium wages."

Sherk also calls for the government to replace the General Schedule pay system and create a pay-for-performance model that is more closely tied to market forces.

The 2010-2011 salary survey by Dice.com found that while average salaries for federal IT workers stayed relatively flat in 2010 -- down just 0.1 percent to $83,292 -- they're still higher than the overall average salary for tech workers, which was $79,384 last year. Average pay for federal IT workers also is up significantly since 2005, when average federal IT salaries were $69,078, according to Dice data.

So what would a pay for performance system that better resembles the market look like? And would you be in favor of it, particularly given Dice's estimate that federal IT workers have fatter paychecks than their private sector counterparts?