GovernmentExecutive.com

Federal salaries support more than the employee earning them. More than half of government workers care for someone other than themselves -- either children or elderly parents. Twenty percent more expect to care for someone else eventually.

In many cases, federal employees' children are cared for at home. According to a Government Accountability Office report issued this week, 51 percent of employees with infants provide care for them at home. Forty-nine percent of those with toddlers provide care at home, as do 47 percent of employees with preschool-aged children and 39 percent with kindergarten-aged children. The second most popular option for all ages was care in someone else's home, followed by care in a nonfederal day care center. A small portion used federal centers.

To ease this responsibility, Congress passed a law in 2001 permitting agencies to fund federal employees' child care. But lawmakers didn't appropriate extra money for the program, much like the student loan repayment benefit in government. In fiscal 2005, only 4,400 federal employees received student loan repayments. The GAO report reveals that, similarly, only 2 percent of federal employees with children receive child care subsidies.

There's another program that federal employees aren't using to pay for these costs: the Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account. GAO found that only 7 percent of employees with dependents have one.

Such accounts allow employees to make pre-tax salary contributions into a savings account to pay for care of dependents. The Office of Personnel Management says employees can "save 20 percent to 40 percent on covered expenses," including child care, baby sitters, summer camp and before- and after-school care for children younger than 13, with the accounts. Employees can stash up to $5,000 a year in these accounts.

Many of the respondents said they don't use the accounts because they didn't know about them or didn't know how to use them.

Employees are using schedule flexibilities to care for their dependents. Across agencies, 28 percent of employees used flexible work schedules to handle their needs, and 18 percent used compressed work schedules to that end.

In the Education Department, 86 percent of employees surveyed said scheduling flexibilities are important to the decision to stay at their jobs. In the Justice Department, 64 percent of employees said the same.

This is another chapter in a long-told story about federal compensation. Government agencies may not always offer top-notch monetary compensation, but they do offer a work-life balance that's hard to beat. Federal employees may not be able to afford an au pair, but they can work odd hours around their kids' school schedule.