Highest-Paid Feds

USA Today is out with another analysis aimed at painting federal workers as overpaid. The analysis of Office of Personnel Management data finds that doctors at the Veterans Affairs Department, lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission and physicians at the National Institutes of Health are among those whose annual salaries totaled more than $180,000 in Sept. 2010.

Federal workers earning more than $180,000 annually represent just 1 percent of the workforce, yet their ranks soared from the 805 employees who earned such salaries in 2005 to 17,828 employees who earn them today, USA Today found.

Surprisingly, some federal information technology jobs made the list. The analysis identified 31 IT management jobs at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and 18 IT management jobs at the Securities and Exchange Commission that commanded $180,000+ salaries.