Being average not so shabby for fed workers

Published December 18, 2009 5:00am ET



Just who is the average federal worker? The Office of Personnel Management, which keeps statistics on the government work force, crunched the numbers to come up with a general profile.

Age: 46.8 years

Average pay: $71,027, or $94,047 for the 372,041 workers in the Washington area

Years on the job: 15.5

Education: 44.3 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher

Gender: 55.6 percent are men, 44.3 percent are women

Ethnicity: 33 percent are minorities, including 17.5 percent black, 7.7 percent Hispanic and 5.2 percent Asian

Disabled: 6.8 percent of federal workers have disabilities

Hours: 93.6 percent work full time

Doing what: 89.3 percent are white collar, 10.6 percent are blue collar

Who’s the boss? 11.9 percent are supervisors and managers

Note: According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average salary for the nation’s 108 million private sector employees is $50,028.

– Julie Mason