are you telling us that once again right wing think tanks full of charlatans produce studies that support regressive propaganda?
in other words, lots of vague arm waving but no real argument that counters the Baker piece.
There's a recent study generated with data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey that tries to account for some of the factors that I mentioned. It's findings are not consistent with the Baker piece. Here's a descriptive summary:
"Conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CPS is a long-running survey that couples earnings and employment information with detailed demographic characteristics of the survey population. At first glance, the CPS data show that the average hourly wage for a federal worker is about 48% higher than a private worker's. Yet because federal employees tend to be more educated and experienced than their private counterparts, as Mr. Orszag noted, one has to control for these skill differences. This reduces the public-private salary gap—but it does not eliminate it. The federal wage premium for workers who have the same education and experience stands at 24%, still a windfall for public employees.
Even using all the standard controls—including race and gender, full- or part-time work, firm size, marital status, region, residence in a city or suburb, and more—the federal wage premium does not disappear. It stubbornly hovers around 12%, meaning private employees must work 13½ months to earn what comparable federal workers make in 12.
Most academic studies dating back to the 1970s have found similar pay differences. In addition to the wage premium, federal workers enjoy more generous fringe benefits than do private workers. For instance, federal workers receive a defined benefit pension with benefit levels comparable to those from private 401(k) plans, except that federal workers contribute only 0.8% of pay and are not subject to any market risk. They also receive employer matches to the defined contribution Thrift Savings Plan that significantly exceed the typical private employer match.
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If the overall generosity of federal benefits matches that of federal salaries (which seems quite likely), total compensation for federal workers may easily exceed $14,000 per year more than an otherwise similar private employee.
The pay premium is probably the main reason federal workers quit their jobs at a far lower rate than do private employees. At the beginning of 2010, federal workers were only about one-third as likely to leave their jobs (a ratio not much different than in 2006, before the recession), implying that no private employer could offer them better compensation.
Federal employment also carries significant nonfinancial benefits—in particular that layoffs and firings are much rarer. If you think these aspects of federal employment lack value, ask any private employee who is now looking for work. A federal pay premium is unfair both to private workers, who receive less than their government peers, and to taxpayers who must cover the difference. Given our 2.7 million-strong federal work force, the government effectively overbills Americans by almost $40 billion every year just on labor costs."
IMO you can easily determine whether or not a given position is "underpaid" by whether or not it remains vacant. If the government can't fill a given job with a qualified person at the compensation that it's offering, then they're attempting, and failing, to "underpay."
Wait, why are higher wages, better benefits, and pensions bad again?
