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Junk In, Junk OutALEC has published several editions of its report, each time failing to correct the flaws in methodology that made the very first one misleading and wrong. Its studies are based on comparisons between all public sector employees and all private sector employees. None of its reports compare the two sectors by analyzing compensation for similar jobs, such as comparing salaries for accountants in the public sector to those for accountants in the private sector. Moreover, ALEC s reports do not account for differences in the distribution of occupations between the public and private sectors. Professional and technical occupations represent a larger share of the state and local government workforce, and they are usually compensated at a higher rate than the blue collar and sales employees who dominate the private sector. The following pie charts show that while professional and technical employees represent slightly more than one-fourth of the private sector, they represent more than half of the public sector workforce. At the same time, sales represents 14 percent of the private workforce but is totally absent from the public workforce.
Looked at somewhat differently, the public sector workforce is disproportionately white collar, which again leads to higher overall salaries. Roughly two out of three public workers are in white collar occupations, while just half of private workers are. Blue collar occupations represent just over one in ten government jobs, but still account for three out of ten private sector jobs. None of ALEC s analyses take into account these very different landscapes within the public and private sector workforces. By making generalizations based on comparisons between the entire public versus private sectors, ALEC seriously skews average salaries and wages. For example, professions like fire fighting and law enforcement are included in ALEC s salary base for public workers, even though they have few or no counterparts in the private sector. |
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