Answer:
Yes it can be concluded that state employees earn on average less than federal employees
The critical value is

Explanation:
From the question we are told that
The population mean is

The sample size is n = 30
The sample mean is
The standard deviation is

The significance level is

The null hypothesis is

The alternative hypothesis is

The critical value of
from the normal distribution table is

Generally the test statistics is mathematically evaluated as

=>
=>

The p-value is obtained from the z-table

Since
, we reject the null hypothesis, hence it can be concluded that state employees earn on average less than federal employees