Interesting Facts about Michigan State Workers Pay and Benefits

Last week I reported on the fact that Michigan’s House of Representatives was looking at legislation that would post the salary of all state employee’s.

Yesterday I came across an interesting article in the Lansing State Journal written by Justin Hinkley that pointed out a few interesting numbers concerning state employee pay and benefits.

I would like to point them out to you.  According to the article when it comes to the cost of providing healthcare to a state employee:

Who covers his or her entire family with all of the health care benefits the state offers pays about $4,722 a year, while the state pays about $20,583

So remember when you look at someone compensation for comparison reasons you must also add the cost of benefits, whether they are a private or public employee, and in this case it would be an additional $20,583 to their salary.

When I saw that we are paying over $20,000 a year for health insurance for a family I was amazed.  I had no idea it was that high.  I did a quick search for private companies and what is the average they pay and I found the following on a website called Zane Benefits:

For family coverage, the average policy totaled $17,545 a year with employers contributing, on average, 72 percent or $12,591. Employees paid the remaining 28 percent or $4,955 a year

Not a tremendous more than the state.  These numbers point out why we really need to get healthcare cost under control.  Not only from the perspective of what we as employees pay for premium’s, copays and deductibles but from the perspective of our employers cost and we as taxpayers.

Another interesting fact that the Lansing State Journal article stated was the cost of retirement, including pension and healthcare, to a Michigan state worker is about 5% of their paychecks but as the article stated:

However, much of the pension and retiree health care system is underfunded and the state must pay more to catch up. That means the state pays an amount equal to about half of payroll — or about $30,000 a year for the average state worker — toward retirement costs.

An additional $30,000 per year per employee is a lot of taxpayer dollars that is not being spent on Michigan citizens.  We need to get these cost under control or it will severely tie Michigan taxpayers hand in the future.

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