FERS Employees Using More Sick Leave

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report on the differences in sick leave usage by employees in the FERS system versus those in the CSRS system, finding greater use by those in the former system late in their careers. The data tend to support a long-held assumption in the federal community that FERS employees have an incentive to use up their sick leave because they can’t convert unused sick leave into credit toward retirement benefits, whereas CSRS employees can. CRS noted that in a 2004 study, it found that FERS employees who were eligible to retire or within two years of eligibility used 25 percent more sick leave a year than their CSRS counterparts (105 hours versus 84 hours, respectively). FERS employees who were eligible to retire used nearly 35 percent more sick leave than comparable CSRS employees (119 hours versus 89 hours, respectively). A more recent analysis by OPM, it added, found roughly the same pattern: FERS employees who were eligible to retire used an average of 20.2 more hours of sick leave per year and those within two years of eligibility used an average of 13.5 more hours of sick leave per year.