Federal Manager's Daily Report

OPM and EEOC have issued a joint memo calling agencies’ attention again to the “persistent low representation of Hispanic/Latinos in the federal workforce” and telling those with 1,000 or more employees to “conduct a more focused barrier analysis on Hispanic employment.”

The memo was the latest, and last, in a series of attempts to institutionalize Obama administration federal personnel-related initiatives whose future is uncertain in the Trump administration, by assigning agencies long-term projects.

It instructs agencies to produce reports by the end of January 2018 identifying potential barriers to Hispanic employment at the GS-12 through SES levels and to make proposals to eradicate those barriers, consistent with federal employment law.

That is to include, as relevant to an agency: analysis of their current workforces; explanations of their recruitment outreach efforts focused on Hispanics; data on applications, promotions and separations; analysis of career tracks that lead to upper GS or executive levels; strategies the agency will take to strengthen pipelines and improve retention and upward mobility; summaries of best practices, and more.

Despite years of such efforts, Hispanics remain significantly under-represented among minority groups in the federal workforce, especially at upper levels, OPM data released last year showed. While the overall American labor force is 14.6 percent Hispanic, the number is just 8.4 percent in the federal workforce and just 4.4 percent in the SES.