There are two basic sectors of the economy that one can work for: public service, that is governmental employment in all of its many facets, or private enterprise, which typically means working at "for profit" corporations. There was a time when working for the government actually was a form of public service in which the overall compensation for doing so was appreciably less than working for private enterprise, to which, those that worked for government, often felt a higher calling to work industriously for the betterment of the social fabric. Perhaps, that type of sentiment still exists somewhere today; in any event, the compensation package for most government employees has improved immensely.
There are significant different between the public and private sector employment fields, in which, sensible people may very well ask why anyone would want to labor for private employment, because employees of such, are often: "employed at will" with or without some exceptions, which basically means that they can be terminated at the company's discretion at any time, they are often non-union, which basically means that negotiations for employment packages are accomplished by one individual vs. the company, are typically not granted pensions, but instead have self-directed 401K packages, and are seldom granted tenure, signifying that despite years of experience and good performance, they could be pushed out of their job at any point, in addition to things such as company mergers, in which their job could simply merge into thin air. While, obviously, there are advantages to private employment, in the sense that the upside, advancement, challenges, equipment, and so forth, are often influenced by the merits of the person working and by the dynamics of the company itself that may or may not work out for a given individual.
On the other hand, governmental employment, if you don't mind the rules and regulations of such, and the somewhat narrow band of the box that you are placed in, has significant merits that often aren't really based on the merit of the work that you as an individual accomplish, but rather it's far more critical to follow the rules of the road, because once you are in, you are in, come good times or bad, come high economic times or poor, because governmental employment is nothing but secure, mostly all of the time. While there are studies that show that not only do governmental employees make more than private sector employees, even accounting for relative education achieved, that isn't nearly as troubling, as the fact that the biggest benefit of government employment, is often their rather lucrative pension fund boondoggles that city or State or Federal governments will grant, without apparently seriously taken into account the long-term fiduciary commitments that are being made. This is a prime incident of putting off till tomorrow what in actuality should be seriously discussed and dealt with today.
The biggest problem with governmental employment is that the money funding all of that infrastructure and labor, essentially comes from the private sector, although it must be stated that since government employees also pay taxes, they do contribute, or rather you could say their contribution is the tribute that government employees must make in order to be a government employee. In any event, the main problem with the current situation is far too often those that have a fiduciary duty to its constituency and its incumbent future generations, don't seem to care about much of anything but the very short term, and when the associated long term costs of government services are either blithely ignored, or deceptively presented, the public is cheated out of knowing exactly how deep that they are committed, and subsequently squeezed paying the man his due, over and over and over again.