kane

It can vary from state to state and it also depends on what job you do. There are many government workers who pay nothing into their pensions and get full benefits after a certain period of time. Often even when they pay into their pensions it is not on par with what the average private sector worker pays into theirs.

Most private sector workers would have a 401K and they put a percentage of their pay into that. Often employers will match the contribution up to a certain percentage and then that money is invested to help it grow. For example, say you put in 3% of your income and your employer matches it. Now 6% of your income is being put away. That money is normally invested into the stock market on your behalf. If the market crashes, you could be out of luck and lose a big chunk of that and how much you end up actually getting when you retire is heavily dependent on how well the investments do.

Many government workers might put 1-2% of their income in, but are guaranteed a certain retire amount no matter what the economy/stock market does. This often ends up costing the tax payers a lot. For example, in New York the city pensions are guaranteed to grow at 8% per year and if investments don't cover that, the tax payers do. What has ended up happening there is that for every $1 the government worker has put into their pension the tax payers have had to kick in $8.60.

Another sticking point is that many government pensions also include free or very low cost health insurance where a private sector retirement likely does not. When you retire getting health insurance on your own is nearly impossible so likely you will end up on Medicare with some kind of a supplemental policy that could end up being fairly expensive.

I'm not saying we should strip government workers of all their benefits, but I think they need to be brought more inline with what a similar person in the private sector might earn.