[quote=AN][quote=bearishgurl]I don’t see the average public worker (ESP safety and CALTRANS) living beyond their seventies and even that is a stretch to me.
Average right now is 78. So, assuming average public employees have similar expectancy to average American, then I would say you made a valid statement that the average won’t make it past their 70s. A good portion will make it into their 80s, though <50%. See that trend line? It's going higher.
Are these average pension numbers public information?[/quote]
I haven't seen SDCERA actuarial tables but know the ages of death are lower for safety members. Anecdotally, I don't believe public workers live as long as private workers and those who never worked, due to a multitude of factors.
What I've SEEN are workers who died IN SERVICE and thus their families were only able to collect the "worker contribution" portion of their retirement accounts (IF the deceased employee actually contributed to them). I've seen workers die months to perhaps 10 years after retiring. These were workers who were NOT in "Tier A" and thus had smallish pensions with very small (if any) worker contributions in them. Why, you may ask?? Public workers often work themselves to death ... or attempt to work during chemotherapy and return to work as soon as medically released after open-heart surgery, etc.
The public hoopla over enormous pensions is over executives and safety workers with ridiculous OT but these pensions are NOT anywhere near the norm. The non-safety "worker-bee" public worker who often serves the public outnumbers the executive worker (with a fat personally-negotiated pension deal) by at least 300 to 1. Even within safety organizations, there are hundreds of lower-paid non-sworn staff doing "grunt work."
The vast majority of non-safety "middle-manager" positions were all but eliminated in the county by 2002, using a "two-year service credit" carrot.
