Why state employees get high pay?

I started my career with the state and the pay was shite back then. I only stayed for 2 years but I left for a private company for around an 85% raise.

Check the payrolls of department of transportation

Well, my department is not one of those.

Though looking through that list.

Wow. The two highest paid employees in my division are not who I expected. Time in the system pays for itself. It's also demoralizing and encouraging at the same time to see coworkers with the same job title, literally making double what I make.

I'm pretty sure that you and I work in a somewhat similar field. I make more than some of their IT statewide directors in a non management position. Some of them seem like they do pretty well though. I'm guessing it's all tenure related.

I don’t know that to be entirely true in the civil sector

Do they really get high pay? Only 55 made over $200k in 2019. 33 of those have "MD" after their names, one was the Adjutant General of the LANG.

I worked for the state a while back. Where I worked there were lots of raises in the past 5 years.

On the lower end, lots of young people with only a high school education. Some have gone from around $16-18/hr to $25+/hr in 5 years. Stick around (even in the same position) and you could be at $30+/hr after a decade.

On the higher end, an engineer I worked with was making about $120k/year. Not running numbers or anything, just managing a small number of people. I clearly remember one day he spent solving a toilet paper dispute around the office. Real engineering is sent to Baton Rouge.

Raises aren't merit based. They pretend they are by filling out a little performance evaluation but everyone gets good marks and raises. Time matters more than ability.

Employees also get a relatively large amount of vacation and sick time compared to the private sector. It also rolls over. So an employee can apply all of that time to their "service time" and retire being fully vested, but not work the full 40 years. Some won't take sick days or a vacation just to save that time for retirement.

I've always known government is wasteful but what I experienced strengthened that viewpoint one thousand percent. Lots of overpaid people (not all) and lots of inefficiency and waste. I had so much free time I felt like I was wasting my life away. I quit, giving up the guarantee of a job and retirement funds, because it was that bad.

I could go on for hours but I'll add one more thing. Many of my co-workers had multiple family members working for the state too. If you don't plan on attending college or learning special skills, an easy way to retirement is the state. Get in at 18 years old and retire before 58 with 100% salary.

I started working for the state in 1972 at $1.88 per hour. We were always behind the hospitals out in town as they were always ahead of us. Benefits was the only draw. Worked out for me in the long run but I probably could have made more salary out in the private world but I liked where I was.

I've said for a long time now that pensions were a way to balance the field for govt workers decades ago, because the private sector paid more. That is no longer true, and pensions need to be a thing of the past. Move them to a 401k and give the taxpayers a break.