Government salaries

Was doing a little benchmarking last night at JobNob and saw some interesting trends in Raleigh. We all tend to think that federal government jobs don't pay well, but these numbers seem to indicate otherwise. Putting aside some biases in sampling (the large numbers of reported government salaries seem to indicate that there's some official effort to report to the site, probably as a recruiting measure, whereas in the private sector lower salaried employees are more likely to self-report), these numbers are nonetheless a little eye-opening. Once you factor in the long-term benefit conferred by a defined benefit pension plan (I think the Economist back of the napkined that at 25-30%), those are pretty good ducats.

Consider that the AFGE -- the American Federation of Government Employees -- has 600,000 members. I imagine that numbers those large would hinder any effort to impose any sort of management discipline on the federal government.