Falling behind? State and local government employee compensation since the Great Recession

New research by Byron Lutz and David Ratner of the Federal Reserve Board and Louise Sheiner of the Hutchins Center on compensation of state and local government employees goes beyond wages to put a dollar value on the benefits that standard compensation metrics mismeasure or leave out entirely: defined benefit pensions, retiree health care, and job security. They find that compensation of state and local workers has fallen substantially relative to comparable private sector workers since the Great Recession. READ MORE