SMRs and AMRs

Saturday, February 26, 2011

In Battle Over State Payrolls, Data Show a Mixed Picture

By MICHAEL LUO and MICHAEL COOPER
NYT

The janitors who buff floors and empty wastebaskets for the State of California earn a median wage of a little over $31,000 a year, which is 45 percent more than janitors in the private sector earn there. Georgia’s janitors, by contrast, earn less than $21,000, about 6 percent below their private sector counterparts.

And in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker’s face-off with unions has thrust public sector compensation into the national spotlight, the state pays janitors a median wage of nearly $27,000, about the same as they would make in the private sector.

The wide range in this single job category shows how hard it can be to answer one of the basic questions at the heart of the budget skirmishes that are now spreading across the country: Are state workers overpaid?

An analysis of recently released census data compiled for The New York Times by demographers at Queens College of the City University of New York yields a complicated picture, one that highlights the variation in pay from state to state and occupation to occupation, and one that does not fit neatly into a one-size-fits-all approach to cost cutting.

(More here.)

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