More on Taxpayer Burdens and Public Employee Pay

David Cay Johnston | Mar. 7, 2011 01:20 PM EST

I have reviewed a study by the Center for Governmental Research, which runs the NYS Data Center, a Census Bureau designated affiliate that is the primary repository of economic and demographic data on New York State. The study is not online, though many others are.

The study shows that public sector workers who are lawyers, executives, managers, software engineers -- that is to say, occupations requiring a lot of education and training -- tend to make less than private sector workers. For example, state and local government lawyers on average earn 49 percent less than lawyers working for private business, data from the 2000 Census publicly available microdata sample files shows.