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Charlie Sykes: Sykes Writes

FRIDAY HOT READ: FEELING NO PAIN

By Charlie Sykes

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Another sign of the Two Americas: Government workers feel no pain.

The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed.

Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses.

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  1. Bob in Zion - Mar 12, 2010 6:47 AM

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    Hey, that local and state government is for the children, any cuts you make will be hurting children, if you don't like state and local employees, you are anti-american and hate children.

    Put all public employees into a 457(b) plan and get rid of the huge pension payments and that would reduce government costs greatly.

  2. Voucher's Rule - Mar 12, 2010 7:55 AM

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    The major problems we have, is that most our elected political elite are owned by the public service unions. There is no resistance during negotiations. By allowing mandatory arbitration through our State’s corrupted arbitrator is just opening the wallet of the tax payers and steeling their money.

  3. R.J. - Mar 12, 2010 10:16 AM

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    They'll feel the pain when they're chopping wood at their new, Up-North, lake-front properties.

  4. conservative - Mar 12, 2010 10:20 PM

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    hey i got a great idea, why don't you quit complaining about the private sector getting less pay then government jobs and just have the entire countries people start working for the government, get government jobs and get that great pay and benefits. OH wait a minute if we did that and there was no private business sector how would all those benefits and high paying jobs be funded? Ya thats a problem when there are no tax dollars coming in to fund this great job making machine. Just a little

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