See hy do so many want Federal government jobs?

[Anonymous]

FRB attorneys get like 20k bonuses.

[Anonymous]

The ultimate life hack is dual husband-wife financial regulator household. Can make more than $500k, plus retirement, low stress, max flexibility, and perfect job security. Can buy a $1.8 mm house and still save and have vacations. Perfect.

Sad to see so many Dmv couples both grind at demanding jobs with so little predictability and family time. So silly and unnecessary. What’s the point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The ultimate life hack is dual husband-wife financial regulator household. Can make more than $500k, plus retirement, low stress, max flexibility, and perfect job security. Can buy a $1.8 mm house and still save and have vacations. Perfect.

Sad to see so many Dmv couples both grind at demanding jobs with so little predictability and family time. So silly and unnecessary. What’s the point?

^This. Financial regulator husband-wife will make at least 600K and that is on the low end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good pay + benefits. Easy to slide by under the radar.

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+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ultimate life hack is dual husband-wife financial regulator household. Can make more than $500k, plus retirement, low stress, max flexibility, and perfect job security. Can buy a $1.8 mm house and still save and have vacations. Perfect.

Sad to see so many Dmv couples both grind at demanding jobs with so little predictability and family time. So silly and unnecessary. What’s the point?

^This. Financial regulator husband-wife will make at least 600K and that is on the low end.

Agreed, dual financial regulator household easily pulling in $2 million plus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ultimate life hack is dual husband-wife financial regulator household. Can make more than $500k, plus retirement, low stress, max flexibility, and perfect job security. Can buy a $1.8 mm house and still save and have vacations. Perfect.

Sad to see so many Dmv couples both grind at demanding jobs with so little predictability and family time. So silly and unnecessary. What’s the point?

^This. Financial regulator husband-wife will make at least 600K and that is on the low end.

Maybe attorneys. I am a FinReg PA and make 170.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some reasons:

- The pay is decent enough, especially in a dual-income household. Two federal employees at GS14-10 will make about $350k HHI, which is enough for most people.

- Guaranteed job security. You cannot be laid off for economic reasons, for being too old, etc. You can work past 65 if you really want.

- Related, you don’t need to worry things like keeping clients, business development, generating revenue, etc. You can focus solely on your work.

- After 15 years you’ll get about five weeks paid vacation, and you can use it on vacations of any length. In the private sector it can be hard to take even two weeks off, but in the government, if you’ve got five weeks or more saved up, it’s no problem to take a month off to travel or whatever (without checking email).

- The work is less stressful IMO. I know many federal employees who work long hours, but it’s not quite the same as in the private sector where you may be forced to work all weekend without advanced notice for something critical or to keep a major client.

I actually think the benefits kind of suck (other than vacation time). Assuming you’re not grandfathered in and pay nothing toward retirement, contributing 4.4% of your salary for the pension doesn’t seem like a great deal.

As a federal employee agree with those comments. Although, in my workplace, 2 people were fired and so it depends on the supervisor how secure your job is. I don't think pension is that generous and that would not be a reason for me to stay in the government. I worked in the private sector prior to government, and it was very hectic. In the government, everything seems to be much slower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:$150k with lots of leave and not that much stress (in many but not all positions).

What % of feds ever see $150k? I would bet less than 5% or 10%.

Less than 5%. You can see the 2023 annual GS schedule here: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/23Tables/pdf/GS.pdf

As you can see, on the regular GS scale, only 15, step 10 makes over $150K base. If you add in locality pay, then most 15, step 7 and higher and 14 step 10 can make over $150K.

https://ourpublicservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FedFigures_19Shutdown.pdf
There are 2.25M federal civilian civil service employees. Nationwide only about 4.2% of the work force is GS-15 and only 8.8% of the work force is GS-14. So about 2% is GS-15, step 7 and higher. Plus about 0.8% of GS-14 step 10. So, only about 2.8% of the work force makes $150K or higher on the GS scale. Now, there are other scales, including SE, but even on those scales, guesstimate that only about 1-1.5% of the workforce would be over $150K. I would say it is highly unlikely that there is more than 4% of the workforce that makes over $150K.

My spouse is a GS-14, step 10 (non-sup) with locality pay that makes over $150K. They have been in the work force for 33 years, and is one of the most sought after SME. They do the work of about 1.5 others and have way too much work that others won't or can't do, dumped on them. So, they get the high end, but they work very hard for their salary.

Yet somehow they're all on DCUM.

I hate reading "even a dual fed household makes $300k." No! The vast, vast majority don't!

We shouldn’t be counting base salaries, but including locality pay. Base salary is not that meaningful.

I'm including locality pay in saying the vast majority of feds don't make 150k individually, or 300k as couples, even in the DMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$150k with lots of leave and not that much stress (in many but not all positions).

What % of feds ever see $150k? I would bet less than 5% or 10%.

… Now, there are other scales, including SE, but even on those scales, guesstimate that only about 1-1.5% of the workforce would be over $150K. I would say it is highly unlikely that there is more than 4% of the workforce that makes over $150K.

This may be an underestimate. Only something like 70% of the federal workforce is on the General Schedule. There are some lower-paid Wage Grade employees, but also all the SES (and SL and ST) and the special pay plans for SEC, Fed, FDIC, plus all the augmentations for medical professionals and IT professionals across many agencies. Most of those other scales exist explicitly to provide higher levels of compensation than the GS. So I suspect there are a lot of highly paid federal employees missed by this data.

There are 7000 SES in the federal government, compared to 50,000 TSA agents. We are skewed in DC since half the SES are here but if you look at the total federal workforce around the world there are a lot more GS7 DOD supply clerks and GS9 VA nurses than high level DC bureaucrats.

Absolutely true. But the finregs have twice as many employees as the SES, and the VHA has hundreds of thousands of employees. Their nurses aren’t all GS9s. They’re mostly on the VN scale and there are almost a hundred thousand of them. Everything over a VN-3 is above $150K a year. That’s something like 5,000 nurses. The Medical Officers are on the VM scale, they’re basically ALL over $150K and there are about 30,000 of them.

So yeah, the GS scale may be only 5% above that threshold and that’s only 75,000 people or something, but when you add in all the other pay scales that might double the total.

I’m sure it does double the total, but we still have around 2 million federal employees and maybe 10% that we’ve found who are SES, finreg, VM, or other special pay above GS. We have as many federal firefighters with really low pay as finreg employees, or border patrol agents, or park rangers. Federal jobs around the country are really different and often cap at a much lower grade.

And please remember that park rangers, TSA agents, and other low paid federal positions ALSO exist in high COL areas. There are GS-5 park rangers in DC, Boston, and NY. Their locality pay brings them to the grand annual total of about 40k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ultimate life hack is dual husband-wife financial regulator household. Can make more than $500k, plus retirement, low stress, max flexibility, and perfect job security. Can buy a $1.8 mm house and still save and have vacations. Perfect.

Sad to see so many Dmv couples both grind at demanding jobs with so little predictability and family time. So silly and unnecessary. What’s the point?

^This. Financial regulator husband-wife will make at least 600K and that is on the low end.

Maybe attorneys. I am a FinReg PA and make 170.

At my finreg, more than half of the 15-equivalent make $250k, the max.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ultimate life hack is dual husband-wife financial regulator household. Can make more than $500k, plus retirement, low stress, max flexibility, and perfect job security. Can buy a $1.8 mm house and still save and have vacations. Perfect.

Sad to see so many Dmv couples both grind at demanding jobs with so little predictability and family time. So silly and unnecessary. What’s the point?

^This. Financial regulator husband-wife will make at least 600K and that is on the low end.

Huh? No. That is not accurate. I work at a FinReg and I make $160K so even if my husband got hired we would not be able to reach your “at least” on the low end. Even if we BOTH got max salary we wouldn’t make that salary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s interesting that there’s a pretty consistent narrative for seeking federal government work.

So, I have a follow up question. Most of you seem pretty happy with your federal government gig, yet you still complain A LOT. Square that for me. How can you be so aware of how good you have it and yet complain that you’re underpaid, for instance? When you say such things, do you temporarily forget the cost of your pension, days off, etc. The whining makes you seem ungrateful for what many of you have described as a pretty desirable situation.

It's hard to answer a question like this because (a) you clearly have an agenda and (b) aren't asking a coherent question with any clarity or seeming understanding that those answering might not complain and/or that even great situations can include frustrations (changing work station policies, weak management systems, etc.)

Many people said pay and benefits but its not clear these people are actually in government. For me, it's a unique policy lever. I've worked in local and state government and federal is different. What policies you can shape, the budget you have to shape them and study them, the scale ... all very interesting. I also think you downplayed the "I know we're in the dmv". I mean, many people come to DC because they're interested in federal policy. To be suprised seems odd, frankly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s interesting that there’s a pretty consistent narrative for seeking federal government work.

So, I have a follow up question. Most of you seem pretty happy with your federal government gig, yet you still complain A LOT. Square that for me. How can you be so aware of how good you have it and yet complain that you’re underpaid, for instance? When you say such things, do you temporarily forget the cost of your pension, days off, etc. The whining makes you seem ungrateful for what many of you have described as a pretty desirable situation.

It's hard to answer a question like this because (a) you clearly have an agenda and (b) aren't asking a coherent question with any clarity or seeming understanding that those answering might not complain and/or that even great situations can include frustrations (changing work station policies, weak management systems, etc.)

Many people said pay and benefits but its not clear these people are actually in government. For me, it's a unique policy lever. I've worked in local and state government and federal is different. What policies you can shape, the budget you have to shape them and study them, the scale ... all very interesting. I also think you downplayed the "I know we're in the dmv". I mean, many people come to DC because they're interested in federal policy. To be suprised seems odd, frankly.

NP, yes a mentor gave me advice when I was in law school that the federal government is a much better employer than state and local governments. And another said that the most boring policy work in government would be more interesting than any work I would do in the private sector. I have found both of these things to be true.

[Anonymous]

This article explains it ALL!!

https://www.bcgsearch.com/article/900046858/What-Yale-Law-School-Teaches-About-How-to-Approach-Your-Legal-Career-That-No-Other-Law-School-Does/

[Anonymous]

When Yale Law School attorneys (and sometimes attorneys from other law schools) go into things like “public service,” academia, nonprofits, government, and all of the jobs of the law firm grid, what they are doing is about as brilliant as it can get. They are finding groups with a ton of money that will pay them the most amount of rent for the least amount of accountability to the economy. They are escaping the market economy and going into a place where these rules do not apply.
“When you take a job with the government, you work for a largely inefficient employer with a near-limitless supply of work and money. There is less oversight. If you are inefficient with your time, there is no “client” to question your bills. Sit down and work forever, leave at 5:30 and enjoy the ride. You can also enjoy your health and life a great deal more. Layoff? Quite rare—you are not part of the normal economy.”