State employee salaries post modest gains, but still lag behind private sector

How does your pay stack up with other public employees across the country? The AFT Public Employees’ latest compensation survey, released on Labor Day, shows that salaries for state-employed professionals registered modest to healthy increases from 2006 to 2007.

The median increase in average salaries across the 45 jobs surveyed was 5.7 percent.

The salary increases, the highest recorded in the last five years, likely correspond to growth in state revenues and spending in the last two fiscal years. Specifically, state general fund spending grew by 8.7 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively, in fiscal years 2006 and 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. In fiscal years 2002, 2003 and 2004, state spending increased by modest amounts—1.3 percent, 0.6 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

Salary growth varies among job titles

Some job titles saw better salary growth than others. Those with the greatest increases from 2006 to 2007 were architects (9.4 percent), employee benefits analysts (9.3 percent), geologists (8.9 percent) and correctional officers (8.3 percent).
In contrast, the smallest increases were reported among foresters (3.5 percent), biologists (3.6 percent), senior chemists (3.6 percent) and systems analysts (3.6 percent).

The public-private gap

Despite this year’s higher-than-average salary growth, the salaries of most state-employed professionals still trail those of their private sector peers. The AFT study shows that private sector salaries exceed state employee salaries in 17 of the 20 cases in which job comparisons were made. In six cases (biologist, buyer, chemist, economist, geologist and lawyer), the gap is 50 percent or more. Across all 20 occupations, private sector salaries are, on average, about 30 percent higher than those of state employees.

Collective bargaining pays

The private sector-public sector salary gap is narrower in states where state employees have collective bargaining, however.

Bridge inspectors in collective bargaining states, for example, earn 17 percent more than their counterparts in non-collective bargaining states; chemists earn 19 percent more and correctional officers earn nearly 40 percent more.

Across all 45 occupations surveyed, the collective bargaining advantage averages about 14 percent.

The underlying reality, however, is that funding of pay increases and investment in public services depend on the state legislatures.

"We keep hearing that state governments are understaffed, unable to fill key vacancies, or losing skilled employees to the higher-paying private sector," says AFT president Edward J. McElroy. "The bottom line is that public structures and services drive our economy and way of life—roads and bridges, water and waste treat-ment, parks and libraries, public safety and food inspection, the list goes on. To continue to reap the benefits of these services, we must invest in them."

AFT Public Employees members Martha McLaskey and Jeff Feist represent two of the 45 job titles surveyed.

McLaskey is proud of her work to make sure members of the public get what they’re paying for at the gas pump or the grocery store.

Although sometimes she has to endure insults about being a public employee, says McLaskey, who has been a state products and standards inspector for 29 years, “when people figure out exactly what you are doing—protecting their [consumer] dollars—they say ‘thank you.’ It makes up for any negative remark.”

The veteran inspector with the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s bureau of weights and measures tests the accuracy of about 10,000 scales and gasoline pumps annually in her 24-county territory in southern Illinois. She also collects motor fuel samples—gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene—that are lab tested for their octane rating, volatility, alcohol and water contents.

"I truly enjoy what I do," says McLaskey, a member of the AFT-affiliated Illinois Federation of Public Employees. "Not a whole lot of people can say that."

While part of McLaskey’s job is to make sure consumers are getting what they are paying for at the gas pump, Jeff Feist, an auditor with the North Dakota Department of Transportation, is making sure his state and others are getting their fuel tax revenues from interstate truckers.

Most of Feist’s time is spent on International Fuel Tax Association (IFTA) audits and International Registration Plan (IRP) audits. The job particulars may be esoteric, but the revenue to state coffers for infrastructure projects is not.

"Millions of dollars in fuel tax come into North Dakota through the IFTA-IRP groups," says Feist.

Under IFTA, a cooperative agreement among U.S. state governments, Canadian provinces and trucking firms, each state and province is responsible for auditing at least 3 percent of the carriers, whose base registration is in their jurisdiction, for all the jurisdictions the truckers have traveled in. The audits ensure that each jurisdiction receives fuel taxes for the number of miles a trucker has driven in each jurisdiction.

"It gets interesting when truckers go into 48 jurisdictions with 48 different tax rates," says Feist, a member of the North Dakota Public Employees Association, "and that is the simple part of the job."