So wait, we are supposed to be surprised that federal employees talk a good game of how they are keeping their compensation in line with the private sector while actually increasing their own salary and benefits quicker than their private-sector counterparts?

Perhaps it is because I spent two hours reading "Shakedown: the Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer" by Steve Malanga yesterday, but I admit this is no surprise.

In fact, I'm surprised the federal employees didn't outstrip the private sector by more than that. Is this because the figures you are using only include salary and not benefits, or is this total compensation? If I am reading together, it is the former...

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others"

The sector of the private sector used* is the same one that allows people who work for a living to occasionally get paid decently when their employer bids (and wins) on a "prevailing wage" contract.

No, I can't document this assertion but such selective sampling would explain most of the confusion.

The reason the federal pay raises over the past three years are more than 0.5 percent below the increase in the ECI is that the federal raises are delayed by two years. The raises for 2007,8,9 are based on the rate of the ECI for 2005,6,7. When the ECI starts to increase, federal wages will lag more than the 0.5 percent figure.

There may be another angle to this. Although he didn't document it, Cato's Chris Edwards (the man who really spearheaded the entire anti-fed gov employee movement) claims in one of his multiple papers on the subject, that government employees are simply promoted faster than their private sector counterparts. The individual grade levels may not be accelerating faster, but enough workers are climbing to higher grade levels fast enough that the result is the workforce outruns the private sector.

Additionally, regarding the education, part of that has to do with the guaranteed promotion points that come with advanced degrees. There is no measure of whether or not the worker can or is doing his job better, just an almost automatic promotion for completing grad school.

The heart of the problem lies in what is known as the "non-competitive promotion,” a term that should make anyone in the private sector want to beat his head against the wall.

Jay-This may be of assistance: http://bit.ly/ett5CF.

Factcheck.org has a thorough discussion of this issue here:

http://bit.ly/fFPBRw

Finally, just because I like playing with new toys, both of the above links are "bundled" here:

http://bit.ly/fjNiJ8

"Perhaps clarity will arrive."

Clarity does not exist with todays US Government.

Compared to WHAT?!?
I've seen report after report saying the "average" Federal worker gets $81,000 per year and can retire at 56. PLEASE, will someone tell the people in Human Resources at DFAS this news?
In the first place, $81,000 is the salary of a GS 11 to 13 in a high COLA area like Washington DC or Los Angeles. It is nowhere near what the "average" worker makes in an area like Indianapolis.
Secondly, the Federal worker bashers are comparing apples and oranges. Their private sector "average" includes the person who takes your order at McDonald's, your local paperboy, etc. Why don't they EVER compare them job for job? A Federal lawyer makes MUCH less than a private lawyer. I work in a Military Pay position. My job has a base salary of $35K per year. Cost of living adjustments bring me up to about $37K. I doubt many HR personnel in the private sector with 10 years experience would agree to that type of salary. Oh and BTW, I know from painful experience how very much less a person working on a civilian payroll has to know to do their job. Military payroll encompasses over 100 separate items of pay that our military gets depending on where they serve, what their job is, whether or not they have dependents, and whether or not somebody is shooting at them.
And last - AGE 56!!! Where do the Republicans, Teabaggers, and other Conservatives get their facts? OZ? The "average" federal worker, about 95% of them cannot retire until age 62 and they must have at least 10 years with the Government. They do not get their full amount of retirement pay nor full benefits until they have 20 years in service.

There are two aspects of the law which apply to federal pay. While the law does state that federal pay is supposed to go up 0.5% below the ECI, the law also says that locality pay is suppose to fully bridge the gap between federal pay and private sector pay in a given area. This gap is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics using a methodology that attempts to match the education and job requirements of federal positions with those in the private sector in different areas of the country (more info here: http://www.opm.gov/oca/pay/html/UsingBLSData.asp). Recent pay increases have exceeded growth in the ECI because the locality pay program has never been fully funded as called for under federal law -- this would entail much larger increases in federal pay. (more info here: http://www.opm.gov/oca/fsc/index.asp)

There are many reasons why average federal pay will be larger than private sector. As another commenter mentioned, private sector employment includes many low-wage jobs that do not exist with the government; as one example, janitorial staff don't get paid well, but are always contracted out at federal facilities, so their wages would reduce the private sector average, not the federal average. In general, federal workers have higher levels of formal education than private sector workers. There has been a concerted effort in recent years to bring highly-paid specialist into the government, where previously they were hired through contractors. This gives the appearance of an explosion of high-wage federal jobs where in reality the same people are doing the same jobs at the same pay, with different accounting. Overall, I can say with certainty that some federal workers are overpaid. I am equally certain that some are underpaid. This is the problem with stuffing all workers into a single pay scale, with a pitifully small performance pay system.