When Bonuses Don't Add Up

Five hundred and sixty-six bucks: That's the median amount of money received by federal employees who got bonuses last year, according to the Asbury Park Press. And only 106,000 of 1.2 million federal workers got some sort of merit award. That adds up to an incentive system that doesn't exactly provide a lot of incentives, analysts told the paper.

"The [federal] bonus system is very small," said Carl Van Horn, director of a labor policy center at Rutgers University. "Often, it's not significant relative to what these people are doing. It's like an 'attaboy.' "