The percentage of veterans in the federal workforce rose slightly in 2015 over 2014, from 30.8 to 30.9 percent of total employment, and from 32.5 to 32.7 percent in what is considered the core federal workforce, non-seasonal full time permanent employees.
In both cases that represents something of a flattening off after steeper growth in prior years; the 2011 figures for the total workforce and for the core workforce were 27.3 and 29.2 percent, respectively.
Veterans accounted for 32.5 percent of all new hires and 43.7 percent of new hires into the core workforce in 2015. The latter number, however, dropped from 47.4 percent in 2014 and is at its lowest level over the five-year period covered in the most recent OPM tally of those statistics.
Among veterans, 81 percent are male; the increasing percentage of veterans in the workforce is a major contributor to an accompanying trend in the same period, a slight decrease in the percentage of women in the workforce.
As in the past, veterans representation was particularly high in certain agencies. In the core workforce, the figure was 57.5 percent in the Air Force, 50.5 percent in the Army and 43.3 percent in the Navy, 36.8 percent in Transportation and 34.9 percent at VA. On the low end were EPA, 8.7; NSF, 10.4 and Treasury, 11.4.
