Who Are the Highest-Paid Feds?

USA Today is at it again, with the latest in a series of reports on federal pay and benefits. Now the issue is which federal employees draw the highest salaries.

Nearly 18,000 feds made $180,000 or more as of September 2010, up from a little more than 800 in 2005, the paper reported. The group includes doctors at the Veterans Affairs Department and the National Institutes of Health, along with Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers.

Overall, the high earners make up less than 1 percent of the overall civil service. And James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation, who has argued that on the whole, the federal workforce is generously compensated relative to the private sector, says that some of the highest-earning feds may actually be underpaid relative to their counterparts outside of government.