At my internship, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we recently had a press release discussing the Bureau’s finding that the gap between federal employee compensation and private compensation has doubled in the past ten years. The numbers are pretty startling, but not unbelievable.
Last week, President Obama (in an attempt to preempt the release, perhaps?) announced a freeze on bonuses for 2,900 political appointees and the lowest federal pay raise, 1.4%, in over a decade for the other 2 million federal employees.
Predictably, Republicans are out in force denouncing such a pay gap (even though the release points to the fact that the gap has only been widening for the past 9 years i.e. not under Clinton, every year under Bush, and 1 year under Obama) and are asking for a cancellation of the already small pay increase (accruing $2.2 billion in savings).
As a federal employee, I have the benefit of receiving a federal transit subsidy meant to encourage federal employees to utilize mass transit and lead the way toward a greener future. To receive such benefits, federal employees simply have to venture (quarterly) to the not centrally located Department of Transportation between the convenient hours of 9:30 AM and 3:50 PM. Since the hours are during the normal work day, most employees travel to the DoT during their lunch break in order to minimize time lost.
Thankfully, the DoT is cost conscious and employs only one clerk to handle such transactions keeping the average wait time down to about 1.25-1.5 hours (based on an undeniably scientific survey consisting of me informally asking my co-workers). Factor in time to and from the DoT and total time elapsed is around 2 hours.
While waiting in the interminable lines that can plague government buildings I couldn’t help but realize that Congressional leaders were missing out on a wonderful opportunity. Instead of a calling for a cancellation of the federal pay increase, they could have announced a plan to create jobs, save the federal government money, AND make federal employees happier!
With the high level of federal wages, 1 hour of federal work (only including salary) is worth $40 (assuming 2,080 work hours per year). Assuming federal employees do the right thing and count 1 of the 2 hours as their lunch and break, the federal government loses $160 worth of productivity from each worker per year (1 hour @ $40, 4 times a year). Factoring in that there are 320,000 federal employees in DC, $51,200,000 in productivity is lost each year due to time spent waiting for the transit subsidy. Keep in mind, this is lost productivity, so a few way savings could be realized is by not having to pay overtime or contracting out less work.
The salary for a GS-5 (fair compensation for handing out the metro benefits) in the Washington, DC metro-statistical area is $27,431 per year. Hire some more clerks, speed up the lines, and save the government money while still keeping federal employees happy.
Elections have swung on even more peripheral issues before.
-ZT
That graph is astonishing, really.
ReplyDeleteI only had to make that trip to DOT once. After that the subsidy just flowed into my SmarTrip card at the end of every month.