Under-representation of younger employees compared with the private sector has been a long-recognized issue in the federal workforce, with the percentage of those under age 30 now about 7 percent vs. 22 percent. Image: Douglas Rissing/iStock
By: FEDweek StaffOPM has launched an “Early Career Talent Network,” the latest in a series of initiatives to create centralized pools of candidates from which agencies may select when they have vacancies, as opposed to direct application for a specific opening at a specific agency.
“The Early Career Talent Network allows individuals to express interest in mission-critical roles across multiple agencies, helping streamline hiring and expand access to opportunities across government. Agencies benefit from a shared pipeline of qualified candidates, improving efficiency and strengthening workforce readiness,” an announcement said.
“We are starting with five common job categories where we see current demand for early career talent – finance, human resources, engineering, project management and procurement,” OPM director,” OPM director Scott Kupor said in a blog post accompanying the announcement.
Under-representation of younger employees compared with the private sector has been a long-recognized issue in the federal workforce, with the percentage of those under age 30 now about 7 percent vs. 22 percent. The federal percentage is down by several points for reasons including the widescale layoffs last year of employees in their probationary periods, who tend, as new hires, to be younger than the workforce as a whole. Also, employees with less seniority are released first in RIFs, other factors being equal.
“By a factor of 3:1, the federal government is massively under-indexed on early career talent!,” Kupor said in the post, while not addressing the Trump administration actions with the effect of reducing the younger cohort.
The initiative follows and expands on the U.S. Tech Force, launched late in 2025 to bring in to agencies private sector experts and managers in fields such as AI, cybersecurity, data science and software engineering into agencies for fellowships of one or two years. (That came in the wake of cutbacks made by the Trump administration of career federal employees in technology-related positions, including closing of tech offices at several agencies and shuttering the GSA’s 18F office, which similarly had been designed to assist agencies in addressing challenges with technology and services.)
At that same time, OPM had announced new cross-agency Project Management Fellows and Data Science Fellows programs with hiring from a central list of candidates. It later launched a specialized track within the Tech Force for engineers and technologists to support NASA programs, and a central site for early-career attorneys looking for federal positions.
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