Why is government salary data considered to be conservative?
US government salary data from the Occupational Employment Statistics survey is considered to be low (conservative) for the following reasons. Wage ceiling: The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics OES dataset collects wage data in bands, but the top category is open-ended, defined as “$80 per hour and above” or $166,400 per year. Therefore, high-end outliers do not exist in the federal database despite their occurrence in the real world. This brings average/means down, since the highest salary rate is recorded as $80 per hour. Yet in actuality, many US employees receive $100, $200, $300 and up per hour. Time frame: In addition, this survey captures data on one-third of US organizations each year. (In total it covers 1.2 million establishments listed in State Unemployment Insurance (UI) files.) Updating 400,000 entries once every 3 years means that upsurges in competitive rates are missed. This makes the OES survey considerably out of date compared to almost any private survey. Org
