Nearly One-Quarter of Federal Workers Make More than $100,000

Nearly one of every four federal workers makes more than $100,000 annually, a USA Today study shows.

Twenty-two percent of federal employees earned more than $100,000 last year, up from 12 percent in 2006.

The average federal salary in 2011 was $75,296, plus $28,323 in medical, pension and other benefits -- about 60 percent more than the private-sector average.

Some additional findings:

• Newly hired federal workers started at much higher salaries than those who did the same jobs just five years ago.
• The 1,250 cooks at federal prisons are paid an average of $66,225 a year.
• Layoffs are increasingly rare under the Obama administration. Fewer than 300 jobs were eliminated due to reorganization in a work force of 2.1 million.
• Federal workers are 13 times more likely to die of natural causes than to get laid off.

But it wasn't all gravy. Federal pay inched up just 1.3 percent last year, a bare 0.1 percentage point more than the private-sector average. Annual federal raises averaged 3.7 percent during the previous four years versus 2.2 percent in the private sector.

Republicans want to freeze the pay of federal workers next year as a way to fund the payroll tax cut.