For a person with long-term interests different from that of the average worker, it is the networking opportunity and chances to build experience in state legislature careers or other state government job, which matter more than the monetary component in a state government salary. Unless you have other interests than earning a livelihood: like many persons who dream of shifting into active politics later in their lives from state legislative careers, a state government salary is poor compensation for work done.
As a recent survey made by the Center for State & Local Government Excellence and published in October 2010 found, even with benefits, government jobs pay less and the average state government salary was at least 11% to 12% less than comparable private sector salary for any pair of jobs that could be compared in the manner of an apple-to-an-apple. The study, named Out of Balance? Comparing Public and Private Sector Compensation Over 20 Years was commissioned by the National Institute of Retirement Security and took into account BLS data regarding state government salary as well as private sector salary over the last twenty years.
Talking on state government salary and the subject of the survey, Beth Almeida, NIRS executive director went on record saying, “For a long time, there has been a compensation trade-off in public sector jobs - better benefits come with lower pay as compared with private sector jobs... What's striking is that on a total compensation basis - looking at pay and benefits - employees of state and local government still earn less than their private sector counterparts.'' So that's the real situation with any state government salary, and regardless of whether you are a budding politician striving for state legislature careers and care little about the money, that is the truth as far as true compensation for work contained in a state government salary.
Poor state government salary defeats the purpose of government
The purpose of government by the people is to be “for the people.” However, a government machinery running on less-skilled workers than in the private sector can hardly aspire to fulfill the needs of its citizens in a manner embodied in the constitution. The fact of a lower state government salary in any job comparable to the salary in private sector creates a situation where candidates with higher performance leave government jobs on a regular basis to join the private sector. Essentially, handicapping itself where recruitment of the best talent is concerned, means that a government is not duly concerned over serving citizens, and the self-defeating posture boils down to the fact of poor state government salary.
People in state legislature careers should take a note of this reluctance of state governments to serve its citizens by creating a state government salary structure that is poorer than that of the private sector. In fact, a lot of corruption in government departments is tacitly approved by that poor state government salary structure which impoverishes employees and creates exploitable opportunities. As Elizabeth Keller, president and CEO of the Center for State & Local Government Excellence has remarked: Hiring managers told us that despite the economy, they find it difficult to fill vacancies for highly-skilled positions such as engineering, environmental sciences, information technology and healthcare professionals. The compensation gap may have something to do with this. Few would disagree, given the current state of affairs in the structures of state government salary.
