Government workers at the federal, state and local level all enjoy more job security than their private sector counterparts. Both in and out of recessions, across races, genders and education levels, government workers have a lower probability of job loss than private sector workers.
A new study found that private workers were about five percentage points more likely to lose their jobs than government workers during the Great Recession and other recessions. The gap narrows to roughly four percentage points during non-recessions.
Private workers during the Great Recession had the worst job security, with a 12.6 percent chance of job loss, while federal workers during other recessions had the best job security, with just a 5.4 percent chance of job loss.
The study used data from the Displaced Worker Survey supplements to the Current Population Survey, which is jointly administered by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The results were published by Jason Kopelman of Lublin Associates and Harvey Rosen of Princeton University in the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series. Kopelman and Rosen were interested in examining job security as a factor in comparing the compensation of public and private sector workers.
It has been well-publicized that government workers are paid more than private sector workers. Previous research by Rosen with Philipp Bewerunge of Neuss Associates found that federal workers earn 39 percent more than private workers in terms of wages and employer pension contributions. That calculation accounts for differences in education, experience and other factors.
With a steady stream of taxpayer funding coming their way regardless of how well they perform, government services are not under the same pressure to work hard as a business that relies on customer satisfaction to earn a profit. Anecdotally, the news is filled with stories about government workers abusing their positions, such as the Environmental Protection Agency worker habitually watching porn on the job and the General Services Administration wasting taxpayer funds on a party in Las Vegas. Data comparing public and private sector productivity are unfortunately scant.
The differences in both job security and compensation are likely partially caused by the wide gap in unionization rates between the public and private sector. In 2013, 35.3 percent of public sector workers were unionized, compared to just 6.7 percent of private-sector workers. Unions continue to sully their own reputation by protecting bad workers who objectively deserve to be fired, not just ones who may be victims of discrimination or misunderstanding. In the private sector, habitual porn viewing would be grounds for immediate dismissal. In the federal government, a long administrative process plagues any dismissal action.
It’s not just porn-viewing employees who are too hard to fire. Any government employee who fails to meet reasonable performance expectations should be more easily let go. Being a steward of our tax dollars should mean government employees are held to a higher standard than private sector workers.
