For a while now I have wondered if I could do better financially by working for the Federal Government.  There was a time when that thought never entered my brain, and then I read a story on thenewamerican.com by Michael Teniant where he wrote: 

While average Americans have seen their wages and benefits stagnate, decrease, or even vanish altogether in recent years, federal workers have been doing very well for themselves. In August USA Today reported that “federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn” and that these same “workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row.

The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.”

Those salary increases for federal employees have really added up, according to a new USA Today analysis, which found that “the number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years” — rising from 7,420 in 2005 to 82,034 in 2010 — “and doubled since President Obama took office.” The percentage of the federal workforce earning over $150,000 increased from 0.4 percent to 3.9 percent during that same timeframe. “Since 2000,” says the paper, “federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

So where do I apply?