Following is an article in a recent MSPB newsletter discussing its findings in an ongoing study of federal hiring patterns, in particular hiring by gender.
The first merit principle states that “recruitment should be from qualified individuals from appropriate sources in an endeavor to achieve a workforce from all segments of society…which assures all receive equal opportunity.” This idea of fair and open competition for filling jobs is fundamental to Federal merit systems. The methods that agencies choose to hire new employees (that is, which hiring authorities they use) can affect the extent to which this merit principle is made a reality. These choices may have far-reaching consequences for the future composition of the Federal workforce.
As part of our upcoming report on fair and open competition, we reviewed hiring data from the Central Personnel Data File (CPDF). Our review revealed a trend that we want to bring to the attention of Federal agencies and hiring managers. In 2000, 43% of the employees newly hired into the Federal government were female. By 2012, the proportion of newly hired employees who were female had dropped to 37%—a 6 percentage point decrease in new female hires.
Many factors affect the proportion of women in the applicant pool and, ultimately, the representation of women among new hires. As discussed in our 2011 report Women in the Federal Government: Ambitions and Achievements, there are many occupations in the American labor force in which men or women predominate. This is evident in competitive examining and student hiring, where males represented most of the new hires into the information technology, engineering, and police officer occupations (males accounted for 80%, 83%, and 92% of the new hires into these occupations, respectively). It is also evident in the direct hire authority, where women were hired more frequently into nursing occupations.
However, occupation does not explain everything. Choice of appointing authority matters, too, as illustrated in the figure below. Most of the methods used to hire new employees in 2012 resulted in a greater proportion of males than females entering the Federal workforce. This disparity is most notable for the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act (VEOA) and Veterans’ Recruitment Appointment (VRA) authorities, which is not surprising given that the active duty military is over 80% male.4 Our research shows that as use of veterans hiring authorities increased, the percentage of female new hires decreased. In addition, we found over 35% of those hired under competitive examining were veterans.
An over-reliance on too few hiring authorities may not be healthy for an organization’s culture, as those authorities may not result in a workforce that is representative of society. Agencies should take care when hiring the majority of their employees through just one or two authorities that limit eligibility to a particular segment of society. Our upcoming report on fair and open competition will discuss in depth the implications of appointing authorities for open competition and workforce diversity.
