Federal Work: Ticket to Prosperity?

The anonymous writer of the "Dateline D.C." column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review thinks the up-and-coming generation of workers--those born after 1980, whom the columnist rather inexplicably refers to as the "Ho-Hum Generation"--are being sold a bill of goods. They skip from job to job, he says, thinking they can maximize their value to employers. But he says there's only one way to work your way to prosperity these days:

Believe it or not, their hopes of wealth through jobs are doomed -- unless they join the federal civil service. In Washington, federal employee wages average out at just over $80,000 a year, with low-rate loans from the federal credit union and health care for the family as a benefit. When retirement comes around, they will carry with them their pension, indexed for inflation every year, and their health-care benefits. Yet the new workers cannot see sticking with one job and know they can do better than a guaranteed federal check arriving every two weeks. Let them do it.