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Public sector employees work nine years less

Written by on 22 June, 2010

A new report released today has revealed that public sector workers work nine years less than their private sector counterparts while enjoying a pay packet of 30% more.

The findings, from the centre-Right think-tank Policy Exchange, show the huge difference between the two sectors as a result of a combination of better pay, better pensions, shorter hours and earlier retirement for the public sector’s employees. They say it shows a state sector full of the taxpayer’s cash while the economy continues to struggle on.

The average public sector worker is now earning 30% more on an hourly basis than a typical private sector worker, as well as getting a much better pension which equates to an extra 15% of their salary. Over a lifetime, people in the private sector will work 23% more hours than a public sector worker, the equivalent of 9.2 years of a public sector employee’s career. While they are working the extra hours, the public sector counterparts would be on sick leave, holiday, strike or enjoying retirement.

The report’s findings abolish the old idea that public sector workers get the better pensions and job security because of low pay issues – they are in fact better off than private sector workers. The typical annual wages for a public sector worker are £22,417, while those in the private sector will live on just £19,932. This is likely to be noted by the new government who have already threatened cuts to the sector to help recover from the recession, and the think-tank’s study claims that there is scope for cuts to be put in place while still being fair.

The results also reveal, from the Office of National Statistics, that the true size of the public sector amounts to over 7 million people, with the number of employees growing five times as fast as those in the private sector between 2002 and 2009. Since 2002 the public sector wage bill has also increased three times faster than that of the private sector; a growth of £67 billion.

Management positions increased by 80% over the period while the wages of officials increased much faster than usual. These changes resulted in the total pay bill for managers doubling in real terms over the seven years, and an increase of £14 billion was spent on managers’ wages. A further £4 billion was added to the budget for other roles such as the marketing, office manager and customer service jobs.

What’s more, Policy Exchange found through Cabinet Office information that the chance of being made compulsorily redundant in the civil service is just 0.00007%; there were fewer than 100 compulsory redundancies between 2005 and 2008, out of a total of 525,000 civil servants. A proposed move therefore was to reduce the cost of redundancies in the public sector; they are avoided largely because they are so expensive, with £432 million spent on payouts to 7,718 officials in the civil service over a period of just three years – a huge average of £56,000 a piece.

However, the public sector is in the limelight further for its productivity; between 1997 and 2007, productivity fell despite the cash injections, while productivity in the private sector increased by almost 28%. The research calls for the public sector pay bill to be frozen for the next four years in order to cut back on spending, while also suggesting that we copy Ireland and the EU by asking those in the public sector to pay more into their pensions.

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