OK, how big a deal can it be, you might ask? It's just a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats, after all. There are more where they came from, right?
Well, yeah, there are more. But the govt isn't looking for them (see below) and doesn't make it easy to join. There has also been a twenty year push for contracting out governmental functions, which I am convinced has inhibited hiring initiatives. Consequently, when I walk the halls here in the IRS offices in New Carrollton (which I sometimes refer to as "Castle Greyskull"), most of the people I see are over 50. The number one social activity is retirement parties, and the number one topic of conversation is how long we have to work before we can go out on full retirement. (Nine and a half months, though I almost certainly won't leave as soon as I'm eligible--thanks for asking.) The managers are the same age and have the same preoccupation.
A little background on Federal retirement regs is in order; I'll keep it short. Until the mid-80s, all Federal workers were in the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). It's a sweet deal. We don't pay Social Security taxes (we won't get it either, unless we earned it somewhere else), and have 7% deducted from our pay. If one has 30 years in at age 55, one can retire at about 60% of the average of one's last three years pay. Work longer, and that percentage goes up 2% a year. There are complications, but that's basically it. In 1987, all new employees were enrolled in FERS (Federal Employees Retirement System), and the existing employees were given a chance to switch--only a few did. FERS is still quite generous. SS is deducted, and retirees get it. There is an additional pension. And there is a matching contribution of up to 5% of salary to the Thrift Savings Plan, our 401k. The major drawback is that full retirement comes at age 65.
So, you see where I'm headed. The Federal workforce has been downsizing for decades, meaning that we don't have a lot of younger people. The people that make up the bulk of the civil service are the last of the CSRS employees and have been thoroughly disgusted with the poor quality of management and Presidential leadership. Every President from Carter on has run against Washington and has made it a priority to downsize the civil service, farming out our jobs to private contractors that we know damned well don't do it as well (because we end up cleaning up their messes). We eagerly anticipate leaving, and many come back as contractors for a few years at a pay increase (plus we get the pension--many easily double their income).
Why is this bad? Look at FEMA. One of their big problems was the loss of experienced CSRSers who could not stand the arrogant incompetence of Allbaugh and Brown. It didn't have the depth of experience to cope with the next big emergency. In my own agency, I see a dropoff in quality and quantity of work. The executives have for many years been awful, and many had one eye on their future with contractors after they went through the revolving door. But now we're losing people right and left, and in their last years the commitment level drops too as they anticipate their exits. I find it easier all the time to go half speed, and I work on the stuff that interests me first. (Fortunately, there is a good bit of such work.) And I've become one of those guys who thinks daily of how great it would be to retire at the ripe old age of 55, when I can still ride my bike (it's beautiful out today) and am healthy. Money is fine, but time is what life is made of and spending it here seems more and more like wasting it.
But enough about me. The only way out of this is to recruit, and to show that the nation values its workforce. We're paid enough, and the benefits are great. What we need most is decent management (next post) and leadership. John Kennedy made people in government feel as though what they did mattered. Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush made us feel as though we were part of the problem (though Reagan and the second Bush were by far the worst offenders, they all acted as though they were ambivalent about being our boss). The President needs to stick up for us against meddling Congressmen and greedy contractors, and in return demand commitment and quality. Most Feds would cheer if a few thousand of the worst slackers were fired--we have to do their work in addition to our own.
Well, here's the article that scooped me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/01/AR2006050100631.html
Civil Service Steps Up Recruitment
Ads
Set to Appear as Survey Finds Students Have Little Knowledge of Federal
Jobs
By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Christopher LeeWashington
Post Staff WritersTuesday, May 2, 2006; Page A19http://www.usajobs.gov/ . The ads come as the federal government faces an unprecedented wave of retirements among the baby-boom generation, with about 60 percent of the government's 1.8 million workers eligible to retire over the next 10 years.
Civil service leaders announced a media campaign yesterday to lure talented applicants to the federal workforce at the same time that a new study says the government needs to do a
more effective job of recruiting college students for federal jobs.
Linda M. Springer, director of the Office of Personnel Management, said the agency will
begin airing four 30-second television ads featuring federal employees touting
the work they do and encouraging viewers to explore job opportunities at
"We often call it the retirement tsunami," Springer said. "We've got to get ready for
it."However, the new study by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, scheduled for release today, shows that federal officials have often failed to reach out to a group of people
who might be expected to fill the jobs of departing civil servants: university students.
The partnership, whose mission is to entice talented people to consider federal careers, found that university students -- as measured by the responses of juniors, seniors and engineering
graduate students at six universities -- say they lack the knowledge of federal jobs and
internships necessary to map out career decisions.
Specifically, 54 percent of students said they did not feel knowledgeable about federal
opportunities, compared with 13 percent who said they were very or extremely
knowledgeable. Forty-two percent of students said they were very interested in
federal jobs, slightly less than the percentage who said they were interested in
private-sector spots.Students said their biggest concern about taking a job in government was too much bureaucracy.
The OPM ads and the report come as the difficulty of maintaining a skilled federal workforce is building. The problem is especially critical at the uppermost levels of career bureaucrats,
with 90 percent of Senior Executive Service members eligible to retire in the next decade.
Max Stier, president of the partnership, said the next generation of federal workers will think differently about their career paths than the generation that is about to retire. "The generation that's leaving" believed in a system in which "they came into government for lifetime
employment," Stier said. "The model no longer works today. This is a problem
the government has never had to address before."
Springer acknowledged the new demands yesterday, saying the government must offer more flexible work arrangements. "We can't just bank on employees today in the 21st century that
want to come work in a bricks-and-mortar building and stay there for 20, 30
or 40 years," she said. "It's not going to happen."
The partnership's report urges the government to create substantive relationships with colleges and universities, pool resources of agencies to recruit for certain careers, stress
the public-service component of government work and tailor recruitment with as
much face-to-face effort as possible. Springer also said OPM and other
agencies must redouble their efforts to simplify the red-tape-laden federal
hiring process, which is notorious for leaving job applicants in the dark for
months. And OPM is encouraging workers who could retire over the next few years
to stick around longer, perhaps through new part-time arrangements.
An area of acute concern is workers with technical skills. The Defense Department
needs to hire 6,000 engineers annually, while various agencies need 2,000
information technology experts, according to the partnership. About 12,500 new
air traffic controllers will be needed over the next 10 years. At the same time,
scientific proficiency in U.S. schools is not keeping pace with that in foreign
schools.
"The numbers are dramatic," said Doris Hausser, an OPM senior policy
adviser. "The university systems of foreign competitors are generating engineers
and scientists at a much higher rate than we are. That's not to say we don't
have good engineering schools, but what needs to happen is for federal agencies
to establish good working relationships with the departments at some of these
schools."
The partnership's report said engineering students tend to be less interested in federal jobs than others, with only a quarter having actually sought information about them.
The report reflects the views of 3,200 students who responded to a survey sent to about 31,000 students at Clark Atlanta University, George Washington University, Louisiana State, Ohio State,
Stanford and the University of New Mexico. At Ohio State, only language and
engineering students were surveyed...
