AAQ: Congress established the Federal Salary Council (FSC), an advisory body made up of academics, private employers and public employee leaders to study the question of comparative compensation of federal versus private sector employees to provide input into annual federal salary changes for budgetary purposes. Their most recent study showed that federal employees are underpaid by as much as 22-35 percent compared to their private-sector peers although most of the differential is skewed at the higher compensation levels.
However, federal employees shouldn’t expect a big spike in comparability pay since virtually all presidents of both parties ignore their recommendations and link any increases to the lower of inflation and/or the increase separately decided for military personnel. The rationale is that federal employees willingly accept lower salaries for job security as well as many benefits NOT factored into the FSC criteria.
However, as an example, the top federal government lawyer in the SG’s office with 25+ years of arguing cases before SCOTUS is paid LESS than the starting salary of a FIRST YEAR associate at one of the top D.C. litigation firms. Indeed, if that first year associate goes into private practice having clerked for one of the Justices, there is a separate $200K to $300K signing bonus separate from their annual salary. I’m sure there are other cases where government employees leave for private sector work at lower salaries, but that is generally NOT the norm in the D.C. area. It could be more likely in more rural areas or outside major cities where CoL is lower and mean private sector salaries are lower than those in D.C.