state employee pay

An angry teacher on Facebook wondered why those in charge of the State Health Plan “felt the need…to remind us that we are funded by taxpayers” on the new…

Pay for teachers and other state employees has generated headlines in news coverage of the budget this year, in part because there have been no legislative salary increases in five…

RALEIGH – North Carolina rewards its state employees for longevity, not productivity, a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight report finds. That’s not a payment system that attracts or keeps…

State government needs pay its employees differently if it wants to keep the best of them. The average state employee earns as much as the average employee nationally, but across-the-board pay raises fail to reward employees for performance. Employees who choose to work for the state are more risk averse and may stay despite a lack of productivity. But these employees merely substitute unseen political risk for visible market risk. The General Assembly should consider more pay for performance and portable benefits for state employees.

State employees can't be blamed for seeking better compensation. All workers do. But to fulfill their responsibility to taxpayers, lawmakers should rely on solid data when evaluating pay requests. The vacancy rate in state government is highly exaggerated, for example, while the number of vacant jobs actually being advertised is shrinking rather than growing. Furthermore, national data suggest that N.C. state workers are competitively paid on average and cannot demonstrate the higher productivity that might justify higher pay levels.