I think it meant they earned 41k in benefits, bringing their total compensation to 123k. But I’m not defending the article, stats like these often make a number of assumptions that don’t hold water once you dig into the numbers. While I have never researched federal worker benefits, I’ve punched holes in some articles in the past regarding state and local pensions, actuarial stuff is one of my dorkier hobbies. A common assumption by these types of articles is assuming all employees will retire with the maximum pension and pension funds will continue to perform the way they are performing now, most pension positions are not entitled to anything if they do not hit a certain amount of time on the job, between 10 and 20 years, or a certain age. So the employee that works for a few years and leaves for greener pastures, ends up forfeiting that fringe benefit, depending on the job, it can be a significant number of people who never reach eligibility. Attorneys are a prime example, local district attorneys or public defenders, even u.s. attorneys often spend the beginning part of the career working for the government and then leave in a few years, to make the big bucks. Right now they aren’t leaving in droves but there are times in the cycle where turnover is incredibly high. Turnover and potential pension abondonment is rarely accounted for in these studies. There have been times in the last few deacdes where the profit from this has allowed the governement entity to not pay anything into the pension system for a year or years, the abandonded dollars and investment profit make the fund self sufficient. Right now, people aren’t leaving and investments are losing, making the cost per employee go up. But to factor the conditions of one year and to project those exact same conditions to continue forever is exactly what caused the real estate collapse in reverse, it’s the same as assuming if something went up last year, it will always go up by that amount forever. It is a thought process piggies were immune to, yet for some reason when it gets to this topic, they lose their minds and can’t think the same way. Things change, that is the only thing that doesn’t change.
