New Report Shows RI Has 6th-Least Government Employees

Thu, 06/03/2010 - 1:32pm

A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that, contrary to popular belief, Rhode Island has fewer government employees than 44 other states.  Last year, there were 53,185 non-federal public employees in Rhode Island, with 33,940 of them working for local governments and 19,245 working for the state.

 

The report also found state and local workers’ wages are often higher than private-sector workers’ because the former tend to be “older and substantially better educated.”

“When state and local government workers are matched with private-sector workers of the same age and the same level of education, the public employees actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts,” John Schmitt, a senior economist at the center, wrote in the study. He did not examine benefits such as health insurance or pensions.

In Rhode Island, the median age of a state and local government employee was 45, compared with a median age of 40 in the private sector, the study found.

And more than half of Rhode Island’s state and local workers – 59.3 percent – had at least a college degree, double the share with at least a four-year degree in the private sector, which was 29.6 percent.

State and local government employment in Rhode Island shrank 3.5 percent between June 2008 and June 2009, more than in any other state, according to a report released last summer by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.

For a copy of the report click here.