GovernmentExecutive.com

It's a classic conviction of some civil servants that they could be living the high-life in the private sector, if it weren't for their dedication to public service.

But two professional associations have taken that fantasy and grounded it in reality, releasing a detailed compensation survey for government contractors in the Washington-Baltimore area.

A private sector director of public affairs and government relations in the area made an average of $161,800 in base pay a year in 2005, with a range of $97,500 to $209,000. A deputy general counsel -- the second highest legal position in a company -- made an average of $156,100 last year, in a range of $90,000 to $208,700. And a chief technology officer, one notch below a chief information officer, earned an average of $184,900, in a range of $109,000 to $305,000.

The minimum rate of basic pay for a member of the Senior Executive Service in most federal agencies is $109,808, and the maximum is $165,200.

The 400-page document on contractor salaries, published this month by the Human Resource Association and the Professional Services Council, offers statistics on basic pay, raises, ranges and new hire rates for hundreds of job categories. Each one is accompanied by a detailed description, and the groups encourage employees to read them closely in matching up their jobs.

The survey also offers some aggregate statistics of interest. Salaries for executive level jobs for contractors were on average 61.3 percent higher than those for their federal employee counterparts.

"We are able to see salary changes that reflect an expanding contractor workforce at increasingly sophisticated levels to support increasingly sophisticated government customers," said Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for PSC.

In 2005, the average pay raise for government contractors in the Washington-Baltimore area was 4.5 percent. Those raises included merit increases, general increases, cost-of-living adjustments and market adjustments. In 2005, federal workers got a 3.5 percent raise, but that does not include promotions or step increases.

And, drilling down a level, 59 job categories in the private sector declined in pay while 169 increased.

Forty-one percent of contractors in the study paid a signing bonus to some new employees, to the tune of about $4,500 on average. Employees who received the signing bonus were usually making more than $50,000 to start.

Here's an incentive that doesn't exist in the federal sector: referral bonuses. About 70 percent of the companies in the survey said they give cash to employees who successfully refer someone for a job. The referral bonus range was from about $900 to $2,300.

The survey also included some data on compensation for workers with security clearances. Forty-seven percent of employers said they pay more to employees with a security clearance. Usually, this means a reported 13 percent to 22 percent higher base pay at all security clearance levels.

This is the third year that the HRA's National Capital Area chapter and the PSC have published a compensation survey expressly for government contractors in the Washington-Baltimore area. The results are available to companies for a few hundred dollars, depending on company size. They can be purchased at www.hra-nca.org.

COMMENTS

• When making statements on this subject, I can only draw upon my own experience. I cannot say the contractors I’ve worked with were paid more than us; per conversation with, they were paid pretty much the same, give or take approximately 10-15 percent. I can not say they were, initially, less experienced since they also were often ex-military doing the same jobs as we were. I can say that they needed to be trained more due to changes in technology since they left the services, shifts in applications due to that military flavor (for those not previously in the military), and a much higher personnel turnover rate. I can also say they cost the government more since the average contracting company markup was at least 100 percent of the individual contractors’ salaries, if not up to 15 – 20 percent more. I offer these numbers for your consideration: If our average salary was $50,000, they were often paid in the range of $43,000 to $55,000. If our personnel overhead costs were estimated at 35 – 50 percent -- for a total cost to the government of $67,500 to $75,000 -- their cost to the government was approximately $110,000 per employee. So saying, I’ve never understood how you can take a person knowledgeable in a high-tech field, replace them with a (basically) temporary employee, add an additional layer of administrative overhead, and still save money. Tip off. GovExec.com reader Posted October 30, 2006 12:05 PM
• The worst part of this story is that the writer does not question the comparison of government employees and government contractors. Government contractors are government employees! The impact of A-76 and contracting of work previously accomplished by civilian servants is the best hoax that Congress has played on the American people. The Republicans want it to look like federal government is getting smaller but it is not! Most contractors that win an A-76 bid end up hiring most of the civil servants that previously occupied the positions needed to do the job -- otherwise they would not have the slightest clue of how to do the job. Contractors that work for the government are not part of the "private" sector. The government contractor is driven by government employees to do what the government wants, when the government wants it and by whom the government determines the work will be performed. That is not a private sector job! They should compare government pay with real private sector pay! I was in the real private sector, and in the early 1980s, it had salaries, bonuses and stock options that far exceed the figures they present for the early 2000s! That's 20 years ago! At a long term inflation rate of 3.5 percent, my pay in today's dollars would be twice the amounts shown in the article but I was in the real private sector and not working for a government contractor, which is a false private sector! You think Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, CACI and others could exist without government? Guess again. The cost structure for these guys has to be comparable with government or they could never win a contract! The higher pay for government contractors results from contractors using far fewer and better qualified people than the government would use to do the same things. Therefore, government contractors can do the job at a lower cost and still pay the employees more than they would get in the government. Get rid of the deadwood in my department and our cost would fall enough to allow the rest of us to make a much higher salary. But that will not happen -- even with NSPS. Taxpayer Posted October 27, 2006 6:50 AM
• And the powers that be say it is cheaper to contract the work out than pay government employees. You put one person on the street to hire a higher paid person. GovExec.com reader Posted October 26, 2006 10:09 AM