 numbers don t lie people do sometimes people don t know the whole story like pay for public sector workers in michigan different branches of the state are compensated differently but overall salaries and benefits are on the rise as the mackinac center for public policy reports  for 2009 average compensation per employee mdash which includes the value of benefits mdash was down 20 percent for private sector employees but increased 36 percent for michigan s state and local government employees that is a different story than the one being told by democrats who rejected an attempt to rollback the 3 increase scheduled to apply to certain state workers this year statistics are a funny thing  