On Thursday, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced drastic job cuts and the destruction of large sections of public health infrastructure, as part of Trump’s unprecedented assault on federal employees and government services.
(Last post here for today, don’t want to clog feeds)
I work in the public sector and part of my work sometimes involves budgeting for personnel. When an agency is accounting for the cost of their employees, they include all direct and indirect expenses. So, obviously salary, health coverage, various types of leave, pension - these are all direct costs. We also calculate agency indirects in some proportion - the marginal cost of having more payroll staff, HR staff, IT support, facilities, etc., to cover the additional employee.
I wouldn’t be surprised for the total cost to an agency being about 40-60% higher than salary cost. The rate reported here is high and could be very well padded, but it’s not entirely out there to me.
I also factor that in, but in cushy government, the benefits are usually in the 25k range. It doesn’t scale endlessly with pay. Fed wouldn’t be on the extreme end of that, in my experience, it gets larger the lower the agency. Could just be my state taking care of employees well though.