"The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.
Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector".
Friday, December 11, 2009
"It's Different Here"
Posted by Harriet at 9:11 AM
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25 comments:
Yeah, and a lot of those spend entire days reading and posting comments.
Metro GM John Catoe got a raise even after the deadly Metro crash.
the gap between the haves and have-nots keeps growing.
Shamrock,
No, only a handful of them read and post comments. Most of them are probably playing facebook games.
I imagine 19% of them were making $95,000 or more before the recession. As the article notes this is just the natural consequence of yearly pay increases and step increases.
Next year the $100k or more figure will probably be 21% or something like that. Ten years from now I wouldn't be shocked if 35-40% of them are making $100k or more.
TBW -- another explanation is likely that the older, higher paid workers who would normally be retiring are likely sticking around (all part of an effort to repair their wounded retirement accounts).
The Anonymous,
I think you are right. That's almost certainly another factor.
And don't forget people from the private sector who used to be pulling in $200k, moving to the security of the Fed, where even $170k may be a pay cut.
I know some people follow Zelman - not sure if this was discussed before.
Ivy Zelman: “Home prices are going back down”
The trend charts were recently updated on redfin with the new data and it isn't pointing a good picture for NoVA housing market. It is interesting that housing stocks like Pulte has already gone down significantly in last couple of months - predicting this news - when C-S gets released for November/December.
Zelman is still bullish on NOVA.
Here's the stock chart you should be looking at spider.
NVR has the largest market share @ 15.8%. Pulte has 3.2% in WDC.
spider-
I think the problem is the government has decided that it is not going to let the major banks fail. In order for this to happen they need to try and put a floor under housing so they will likely continue creating expensive programs so that nationally housing doesn't fall. Because the local economy is relatively strong here these programs will make it hard for housing to quickly come down to historical valuations.
Cara said...
"And don't forget people from the private sector who used to be pulling in $200k, moving to the security of the Fed, where even $170k may be a pay cut."
Ding ding ding!!!!
Nice.
When I first read this, I thought it was a misprint. But, Obama said the same thing:
"Our country continues to face serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare, and most Americans would not understand or accept that federal employees should receive an average pay increase of 18.9 percent while many of their fellow citizens are facing employment cutbacks or unemployment," Obama said.
Obama said the average 2.0 percent pay raise he wants would cost the government $2.7 billion next year.
Link
Without the Obama action, the Feds were going to get a 17% pay raise? That can't be right.
Wow. Talk about mood-killer comments. Sometimes I believe the negative spin is over the top; particularly unsubstantiated speculation.
Hey Feds is worth it.
Here's the rationale from your link,
"average locality pay adjustments of 16.5 percent."
Housing prices go up, Feds need more $$ to buy houses in DC, Arlington, Alexandria.
Robert,
With Centex/Pulte merger, their market share is about 9% in this region.
housebuyer,
Agreed and this is the only reason prices won't correct as quickly as it would otherwise. Having said that, look at the real time charts on redfin & sites like altosresearch - clearly showing downtrend is accelerating in many zip codes across this region.
Here are the direct links to what I am talking about. We seem to be almost at the march bottom if you see the recent data:
22182 - 270$/sqft
22181 - 280$/sqft
22027
spider -
Look at 22181. The median sold price was $695k in Nov. That's up 73.8% from the previous month. Wow.
Robert,
You will find good news in any way, shape or form. I wonder if you were even mildly bearish during 2008 downturn!!!
You know as well as I do that $/sqft is more relevant.
spider & robert -
The two numbers are offsetting. Bigger houses tend to have lower $/sqft. So as the market thaws bigger houses are being sold so the median goes up and price /sqft goes down. I don't really think it really tells you much about market direction.
Spider -- its best not to bring up Ivy Zelman as she is bullish on the DC market. Pointing out her bearishness about the rest of the US in general, adds legitimacy to her bullish calls here (i.e. she is neither a real estate shill or a permadoomer) and only underscores the "its different here" theme of this post.
spider - that was sarcasm. I'll label it next time. Point was your data set is too small.
Robert,
Agreed, data set is too small - I can't claim this proves the trend yet. We have to wait little more to find out.
Locality Pay adjustment
Be careful, If i have it right, it's not 16.% jump every year, but a
locality jump.
If a GS-X makes 50K in say IOWA,
then they would mke 58K here.
Add 2% annual increase, and it's
60K.
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