How To Make A Misleading Public/Private Earnings Gap Disappear
USA Today last week published yet another story claiming that public sector workers make more that their private sector counterparts – this one saying that Wisconsin is one of many states where this is the case. Their “analysis” used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and compared total compensation (salary+benefits) between workers in the private sector and state/local government.
No matter how many times they are told that you can’t just make a straight comparison of dissimilar groups of workers, apparently they still don’t get it. Incredibly, this particular article admits as much, and even quotes economist Jeffrey Keefe, who tells them that the gross comparisons don’t account for important sectoral differences in education and other factors. In other words, their numbers don’t tell us much of anything about public versus private sector compensation. Still, there is the headline: “Wisconsin one of 41 states where public workers earn more.” How many people saw that headline, and now believe that public workers are “overpaid?”
USA Today, of course, is not alone. These assertions have lately become insidious, coming from governors,commentators, and others. But when a major national newspaper decides to run this story at this politically-
