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Data Shows State Employees Earn 2x More Than Private Sector

LANSING (WWJ)  The Governor's office is looking at new data which shows that Michigan state employees are making more than twice the workers in the private sector.

"It does show a relative imbalance in some ways, it's one of the issues we have to look at, Snyder said.  "I don't want to over react, these are the facts, then you have to dig in to say, "What would be a comparable basis of apples to apples?", .... this is macro-data, but it does raise some serious questions that need to be addressed," Snyder told WWJ's Tim Skubick.

Governor Rick Snyder is reviewing data that says the private sector made about $40,000 in 2009 compared to the public sector which was at $85,000- more than double the average of the private sector.

The lobbyists for UAW Local 6000, which represent 1000's of state employees, are rejecting the Governor Snyder data.  

Ray Holman with the UAW says it's not true, "You're talking about state workers that are attorneys, engineers, have Masters Degrees in social work, are making decisions that affect people's  lives.  You need to have competent people. Again, if you are comparing average private sector employee who works at a fast food place that doesn't have a college education, then, yeah, it's worthless."

"I didn't tell them to get to this number or that number, they simply went and got data," Snyder stated. 

When asked about the accuracy of the data, Snyder said, "Well, good hard-working people put this data together. If other people want to bring other data forward, we should look at it."

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