As we wrote about last week, the federal government incurred a budget deficit of $655 billion for the first half of fiscal year 2010. All this while public sector jobs grew by 100,000 over the last two years compared to the 8.7 million jobs lost on the private sector of the same time period.

You know, 100,000 jobs doesn’t sound like a lot, but compared to the job losses in the private sector it is massive. To make matters worse, those jobs probably pay more than similar jobs in the private sector.

USA Today has the story:

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

Federal pay ahead of private industry – USATODAY.com

USA Today created a comparison chart to show the differences between similar jobs in the public and private sector. Below is a small sample:

Click this link to view USA Today’s complete list.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air sums up the reason for the disparities:

Most of these jobs are unionized. The SEIU and AFSCME have a grip on the federal workplace, which is — not coincidentally — why taxpayers pay double for a recreation worker, or 45% more for pest control salaries rather than just call Orkin.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Federal pay surpasses private sector

No wonder the deficit keeps growing.

Stimulus mostly creating government jobs+government jobs paying more than private sector jobs=deficit.