Today's question: are public sector workers paid too much?

Private sector pay and benefits have been better for most of the last 30 years than for the public sector; and they will again be better once the economy recovers. Even if the public sector is better off at present that is merely a fulfilment of the promises of the past -'your pay may be lower but you have more security' is what public sector workers were told in the past.

Re-reading the article and comments leads me to another question. What if the figures are all correct and public sector workers are earning more than private sector workers even when you look at "like for like" jobs (unlikely though this is, given my own knowledge and Tomasi's experience described above)? What should be done if this is the case? Private sector workers seem to be only able to look at the public sector with envy and demanding that public sector pay goes down. Instead, perhaps they should be asking why their pay is lower than public sector workers' while big shareholders (I am not talking about people who have £2000 worth of shares here), CEOs/ MDs, bankers making millions in bonuses and the billionaires who own many of the companies in this country are finding it difficult to discover new ways of spending their money (made by underpaying said private sector workers).

Is like being compared to like here? Private sector jobs include many fairly low-pay jobs e.g. in MacDonalds (I don't mean to pick on MacD's; I just use it as an example). However, public sector jobs often require certain qualifications that are not necessarily present at the lower-end jobs in the private sector. Doctors are highly paid people and the vast majority work in the public sector - practically none work full-time in the private sector. Surely people like doctors push up the average public sector pay. Moreover, people like doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants etc earn vastly more doing private work than they do in the public sector. Hence, comparing mean public sector and private sector wages are meaningless unless you compare like for like. Look at a corporate lawyer with, say, 5 years experience and see what they earn in the private sector vs. what they earn in the public sector and then you will get a truer picture.