So which public sector jobs are better paid in the public than the private sector?

[lesley33]

I am sure you have read in the news about the proposal to freeze or reduce public sector pay in poorer parts of the country. Part of the argument being put forward is that public sector wages are higher than in the private sector, in all but the South East. However I am struggling to think of jobs where public sector staff are paid more than the equivalent private sector staff. However, perhaps that is just in my area of work.

So if you know of jobs where the equivalent post is paid less in the private sector than in the public sector, please let me know.

Actually thinking about it our board directors earn more than they would in a similar sized private organisation. Apparently it's because because if you want the best you have to offer them the best money and also to make up for the lack of share payouts.

It's that old truism isn't it - you pay the people at the top more to work harder, and the people at the bottom less for the same result .

xenia - surely it depends though if people are paid less or more for the same type of job in each sector? After all there are a lot of low skilled jobs that are poorly paid in the private sector - I would think much more than in the public sector. So just looking at average wage ime is pretty meaningless.

It would be like saying staffin GP surgeries in the public sector earn more omn average than staff who work in the private sector in ASDA. That is why my question was about comparing comparable jobs between the two sectors.

Call centres, maybe?

I'm paid a lot less in the public sector than I was in the private sector - same line of work (professional). Pension & other T&C made up enough of the difference when I switched that it was bearable. Wouldn't be the case if I were making the same decision today.

Also there are a lot of jobs that exist in much larger numbers in the public than private sectors (teachers, doctors, etc), and which require higher educational levels. Obviously that raises the average public sector salary but the private sector average is brought down by minimum wage/unskilled labour of which there is far less in the public sector (and not all because it's been outsourced).

Xenia- whilst I often agree with you, I think you are missing the point by comparing nurse, teacher, etc salaries which require certain qualifications with average pay that may not.

Reducing public sector wages will just lessen the pressure on employers to pay decent wages and, in the long run, will harm the economy of every part of the country except London. This should not be a race to the bottom.

This film from the Office of National Statistics describes beautifully why it is a bad idea to leap to conclusions about the public sector being 'feather bedded' and why the situation is considerably more complex.

I don't think nurses or teachers need degrees, they never used to. It's just a way to restrict who can apply for the jobs.

I think there needs to be a distinction between working for the civil service and working for a council. Civil service has a lot better deal than most councils (who set their own pay scales for majority of staff) yet people always quote 'their friend in civil service who got 6 months full pay when on maternity leave'

My job doesn't have a comparable job in the private sector but jobs such as care assistant & admin staff are on a similar wage to private sector so totally undervalued but have a pension (final salary hasn't existed here for at least 12 years) & better terms and conditions. I don't see why we aren't aiming for better t&c all round rather than eroding what there is.

Grag- govt want teaching to be a masters + profession.

HCAs are paid less in the private sector then the public sector I think.
I agree with the other posters though that it shouldn't be about a race to the bottom all the time. I think the idea that all public sector jobs are feather bedded is a fallacy and there are a hell of a lot more poorly paid low status public sector jobs then gold plated ones.

I work in HMRC.

I don't know what my equivalent job in the private sector would be. In my job I have to know as much as say an accountant, who is most likely paid much more than me.

There is such a huge variety of jobs and skills within HMRC that I do not know how each one will be compared to the private sector. Some are possibly paid more, others less but the costs of such an exercise must be huge.

Oh and I have worked in the private sector, and took a pay cut to join the civil service.

When I last looked at a comparable classroom teaching job in the private sector it was twice the money with even more holidays.

Oh and my old next door nieghbour was a ward nurse, she said that she wouldn't go back to the NHS as she sould earn more through agency work than doing FT nursing. She went from FT to three days per week (four if she felt like it) and was much better off.

Nb: this was five years ago

If we include agency work it's generally much higher than public sector. Friend was a SW working 3 days for a full time salary. Even with lack of holiday/sick pay it worked out well for her.

Thanks for the link BoffinMum - that's really well explained, isn't it.

The Office for National Statistics did a survey in the summer to find the difference between pay in the private and public sector. The results were that low skilled jobs were better paid in the public sector, but high skilled work was significantly lower paid - which seems to fit in with my impression.

I think IT, lawyers, accountants and managers tend to be better paid outside the public sector. Not that I think there is anything wrong with this - the difference between low and high pay is getting ridiculous in general.

Thats interesting, thanks Gaully.

Depends how you define 'private'? If that includes the 3rd sector, then most/many environmental jobs, plus many that relate to the provision of housing/social care are better paid in the public sector than in the 3rd (charitable) sector.

There are many jobs that only exist in the public sector so attempting to compare it to the private sector is pointless. Yes you may get people doing "biodiversity stuff" in the public sector, private sector consultancies and the third sector, but the actual content and purpose of those jobs will be totally different. Therefore comparing them is a pointless exercise.

Most of the people I know are only working in the public sector because that's the only place they can do that job. If there was another option they would get the hell out of there.

Perhaps the Government could first look at bringing public sector T&Cs into line with each other. For example the gold plated T&Cs of civil servants compared with the rest of us.

I agree completely with tranquildade. Surely we should be trying to improve working conditions for everyone, not erode already decent terms and conditions?

One of the reasons why many jobs/areas of work were contracted out from the public sector in the past was because the private sector could get away with employing people for as little as they possibly could for what were seen as low skilled jobs. Then the hospitals etc found that they no longer had cleaners who cared at all about the job they did (why should they, they knew they were getting totally shafted and had no loyalty to the hospitals or indeed the companies who employed them) and because the contracts were all about lowest cost not quality of service standards dropped substantially with little recourse.

It is incredibly shortsighted to look only at the wage bill without considering any of the knock on costs and effects. There is good research evidence showing that happy, engaged staff in the NHS (and probably elsewhere) deliver higher quality care and better outcomes. Which means people getting better quicker (a good thing in itself) and thus costing less.

Regional pay differences have been used in the past, usually as cost of living allowances. I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing, but the current plan is more about ways to cut costs than anything else. which is not necessarily the wrong thing to do right now, but should not be spun as anything else. Paying people in the public sector less will if anything make the option of contracting out to the public sector less attractive (why pay the same amount for a poorer service?) so I can't see how it can be sold as advantageous.

Not necessarily gaelicsheep For example ecological surveyors, rangers, land management positions, environmental records managers, farm advisors and planning ecologists all doing virtually identical jobs occur in both councils and charities nationwide (the exact set up varies regionally). These jobs are almost always better paid in the public sector which is why many councils now outsource these services to the 3rd sector.

there aren't as many posts in my field in the private sector, but the ones I know of pay better than my NHS post.
people used to leave the private sector posts for the public sector due to better training opportunities, but these disappeared when the cuts came in, so now everyone in the private hospitals is sitting tight.

OK, well that was an example plucked out of the air. I could have given my own sector as an example - which definitely would have been true - but didn't want to for obvious reasons.