A rarely good article from The Oz

Concentration of bullshit jobs in the federal public service is not unique to the US. Canberra, as much as Washington DC, houses departments teeming with highly-paid people who seek to regulate health, education, agriculture and commerce, for instance, but whose staff could go on strike for a year without causing a ripple of concern among the wider populace. In the US, as in Australia, most useful services — police, courts, teachers, hospitals and bus drivers, for example — are employed by state governments.

This is why federal public servants, unlike their state counterparts, rarely if ever go on strike: sheer embarrassment.