Published at Open the Books Substack
Last year, we worked together with Senator Joni Ernst’s office to quantify the federal bureaucracy. We asked questions like: How many are there? What are they earning compared to the private sector? Where are they located? How do they perform? And how much vacation do they enjoy on taxpayers’ dime?
Many of the answers were pretty damning.
Our findings were documented here on Substack and at Newsweek in our joint oped, “Where’s Waldo at Club Fed?”
We found that after just three years of federal employment, workers enjoyed 44 days of paid time off. Nine weeks of vacation must be nice!
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average real wage for a private worker (FY21) was $54,339 – but at 109 of 125 federal agencies in DC, the average salary was over $100K.
Read the full story.