USA Today reports on the growing compensation gap between bureaucrats and workers in the productive sector of the economy. My colleague Chris Edwards already has documented how federal bureaucrats are overpaid, so the extravagant compensation for state and local bureaucrats is not very surprising

State and local government workers are enjoying major gains in compensation, pushing the value of their average wages and benefits far ahead of private workers, a USA Today analysis of federal data shows. The gap is widening every year, rising by an average $1.02 an hour last year and $2.45 an hour over the past three years.

…State and local government workers now earn an average of $39.50 per hour in total compensation, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Private workers earn an average of $26.09 an hour. Benefits are a big reason for the gap.

…From 2000 to 2007, public employees enjoyed a 16% increase in compensation after adjusting for inflation compared with 11% for private workers. The nation has 20 million state and local government employees. About 116 million people work in the private sector.

The pay gap obviously is bad news for taxpayers, but the bigger issue may be the misallocation of labor. When compensation for bureaucrats is excessive, this encourages people to migrate into government jobs. This means that they are not in the private sector, producing value for their fellow citizens. This does not mean, to be sure, that every bureaucratic position is useless and every bureaucrat is lazy (I’ll resist the temptation to comment on DMV offices) and it does not mean that every private employee is a workaholic. But over the long run, the economy’s performance will suffer because labor is not being used productively.