And Were It Not For Generous Parents, We’d Have The Same Problem In The Publishing Industry

Of course the healthy wages are encouraging the best and brightest to commit to careers in municipal government:

Roughly 8,000 New York City employees — or 3% of the municipal workforce — earn such an abysmally low salary that they are forced to get food stamps to feed themselves and their families, the Daily News has learned.

And approximately 340 city workers are on welfare, according to the Bloomberg administration. Councilman Bill de Blasio, chairman of the Council’s Welfare Committee, said he finds the revelation troubling.

“The goal of the public sector should always be to pay people enough to feed their family and guarantee that that’s a living wage,” said de Blasio (D-Brooklyn). And if the city workforce mirrors the general population, he said, there could be thousands of others eligible for food stamps.

The city’s top welfare official, Human Resources Administration Commissioner Verna Eggleston, stunned the Council last week when she revealed many of her staffers go to food kitchens in-between pay periods.