[quote=CA renter] But from what I’ve seen, the turnover in the private sector tends to be very high relative to the public sector, and private sector employees seem to spend a lot of time (on the clock) looking for new jobs or getting distracted by personal issues.
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Well of course turnover is higher in the private sector. There’s no Defined Benefit retirement plan locking the employee to the company if he gets bored or frustrated with the company and chooses to leave. Anybody with an IQ higher than 10 isn’t going to leave a defined benefit pension once they’re 5-10 years into employment. There’s an exponential ramp in annual payments the further you get into a plan because you tend to get an increase due to another year of service and many public employees have set pay increases along the same years of service principal. At the job for 10 years and now you’re a job title III instead of a job title II that comes with an automatic raise.
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If you look at the requirements for employment for similar positions, you’ll see that the public sector tends to have higher qualification standards WRT education and experience. Additionally, many public employers require candidates to pass thorough background checks and a series aptitude and psychology tests in order to be considered for a position. I’ve not seen anything like it in the private sector (for similar positions) outside of positions that work with sensitive government information.
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I agree that public employment tends to have greater education standards but I don’t know that it means those are better employees. Is a person with a Masters from National better than a person with a BS from UCSD. In government employment it is but it’s not necessarily true in the private sector.
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Yes, the government needs to hire the best possible candidates because govt entities are seen as deep pockets; they cannot risk hiring someone who will be a liability to them. They compete with private sector companies for employees so they have to offer something that will attract and keep the best employees. In the public sector, the value of training and experience on the job often trumps other variables, so keeping a lid on recruiting and training costs (which are VERY high) is extremely important to public agencies as well.
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Do you have to offer a defined benefit plan to be better than the private sector. Why not just offer a 10% gross salary defined contribution. That’s already far better than what the private sector is offering. And it’s pretty close to the additional cost that offering a defined benefit plan is.
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And I’m not just advocating for DB pensions for public sector workers. I think all employees should have DB pensions of some sort.
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The country is already struggling with how they are going be able to tax enough to maintain social security. Social security is funded by taking 13.4% of your gross salary and for most people social security is going to pay up to 40% of their final year of pay (for the people here it will be much less) while many public sector defined pensions plans pay north of 60% of their final year of pay. It just isn’t likely to work from a mathematical standpoint. You’d probably have to contribute double the social security contribution rate to have a stable pension that’s as generous as the public sector and the public sector employees aren’t contributing that much. They are all betting on asset price inflation to make it work and/or tax payer backstops.
