Workers bolt from government jobs; private-sector pay is just half the story

When Andrea Marino graduated from college, she was glad to get a state-government job in Utah as an environmental engineer. But after a few years, restlessness set in.

?“I felt really stuck,” Marino recalls. “I wasn’t earning as much as I could, and the opportunities for growth were limited.” She quietly started a job hunt, pitching her skills and her eagerness to learn to a wide variety of private-sector companies.

This summer, all the pieces came together. Today Marino is an environmental engineer at Stepan Co., near Atlanta, earning almost 50% more than she did while working in the public sector. The hours are a little longer, but she’s excited about her new employer’s growth track, “which could be good for another 10 years,” she says.

Lots of other workers across the United States have been turning in their government-ID badges in favor of a chance to try something bolder — and better-paying — in the private sector.?

A new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team finds a 15.6% decrease in the past two years in the pace at which workers are starting government administration jobs, relative to the level of talent flow in the other direction. (i.e. people leaving government work in favor of private sector jobs.)

Each metro area is its own story, of course — and the chart above highlights a few locations where government work is gaining in popularity. That against-the-grain pattern can be found in state capitals such as Santa Fe, N.M., Sacramento, Calif., and Albany, N.Y.

More commonly, the dominant job switching pattern has been to leave government work in favor of private-sector alternatives. That’s especially common in Sunbelt metros such as Tampa, Charlotte, N.C., and Dallas-Fort Worth.

What’s nudging government workers to the exits these days? Traditionally, there’s been a near equilibrium in the ways different types of employers are viewed. Higher pay and a faster tempo of work pulls some people to the private sector. Others prefer the greater job security, stronger retirement benefits and gentler work-life balance offered by many government jobs.

Lately, though, the public-sector path has become rockier. Big employers such as the state of Virginia have clamped down aggressively on work-from-home arrangements. Other states have peeled away unique job protections that made it very difficult to fire long-time government employees.

Jenny Kosek, a former economic development specialist for West Allis, Wis., wrote in a recent blog post that when she went looking for a new public sector position, “the job ads for municipal roles sounded old fashioned and tiresome, not at all exciting or contemporary.”?

By contrast, when she looked at private-sector opportunities, she “found hundreds that checked my boxes.” Kosek now is a senior writer at Bracken Marketing, which serves the digital health industry.

Many others are making similar career pivots. In the first five months of 2022, according to LinkedIn data, former government workers were especially likely to switch to private sector careers in technology, information and media. Other top choices included financial services, manufacturing and professional services.?

Jennifer Falkenrath started her healthcare career as a state regulator in Utah, overseeing pharmacies. Now, she’s a senior research associate at Pharma Solutions, which helps many hundreds of healthcare companies make sure they are in compliance with all relevant regulations, earning nearly 50% more than she did during her public-sector days.

If pay were the only source of friction, and everything else about government jobs was ideal, the current outflows might be a lot smaller. But there usually are non-monetary issues at play, too. For Falkenrath, greater freedom to work from home was a big plus.

For Cat Schooley, a geospatial research scientist, leaving government work behind has made it easier for her to relocate from Utah (too hot!) to Oregon, which she likes more. She says her new corporate role offers more personal growth.?

And with everyone’s newfound focus on America’s inflation rate, it’s a lot easier to press for raises in the private sector than in government jobs. As investment specialist Steve Moseley told Alaska television station KTOO, “a private business like a brewery can raise its salaries without consulting the governor or legislature.”

Methodology

Economic Graph researchers analyzed the ratios of LinkedIn members who started public sector jobs relative to those who left such jobs in the January-through-May periods for 2021 and 2022. Public sector jobs are classified as those within the government administration category. Metro areas were ranked according to their public sector inflow/outflow ratio. Metro areas with? limited public sector job transitions (i.e. inflows + outflows below the top 20th percentile) weren’t ranked.

LinkedIn data scientists Nadine Fares and Danielle Kavanagh-Smith contributed to this article.