A long predicted "retirement wave" never came. Federal retirements have been fairly steady at around 60,000 to 70,000 each year apart from the Postal Service. Image: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffDuring a visit with soldiers who were about to be sent off to Iraq in 2004, Donald Rumsfeld, then the Secretary of Defense, was asked by one of them why they had to scrounge for materials to better protect their vehicles.
His famous — or infamous—answer was “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Federal employees can be excused if they conclude that they are viewed in the same way — as not the government workforce that civil service leaders in Congress and the executive branch wish they had.
The government those leaders seem to want would be more like a Silicon Valley startup. Younger, more innovative, quicker to deploy new technology, with people changing jobs frequently, bringing in fresh ideas from outside. And those leaders seem to think they would have it, if only the current workforce would move on.
This has been projected for years, focused on the “retirement wave”—or still more sweeping, the “retirement tsunami”—when the Baby Boom population hit retirement eligibility. That view continues today, with the constant repetition of statistics such as that 15 percent of the federal workforce is already eligible to retire, and that in five years 30 percent of current employees will be eligible.
That wave never happened and there is no reason to believe it will. The youngest of the boomers are now pushing 60 while the oldest are not far from 80, taking 1946-1964 as the birth years for that cohort. The oldest of the generation behind them, Gen X, are now in their late 50s and becoming eligible for retirement.
What has actually happened is that federal retirements have been a fairly steady flow at around 60,000 to 70,000 each year from agencies apart from the Postal Service (which accounts for about 40,000 more on average). That’s around 3 percent per year, so when it’s five years later, 15 percent or so already have retired and there’s still only 15 percent who are eligible.
Since those first soundings about a retirement wave, the workforce actually has been increasing in age. The average is now 47—five years older than the overall U.S. workforce—with about 28.7 percent age 55 or above, up by a half-point just in the last six years. The percentage age 60 and older—which more or less equates to retirement eligibility—rose from 9.4 to 14.5 percent over the last 15 years.
In some occupations the pattern is even more distinct. In IT-related jobs, for example, the percentage of those 60 and above rose from 7.6 to 17.2 in that time. The percentage of federal IT employees under age 30 fell in that time from 4.1 to 3.8 percent.
What those statistics, contained in a recent White House budget book, show is a federal workforce that is very stable and which skews older than the overall workforce. That same book goes on for page and page about hiring initiatives—improving the USAJobs site, recruitment campaigns, beefing up internship programs and so on.
All of those should pay off someday, but what about the workforce of today? What is being done to make sure that all those long-time employees are continuing to develop in their careers?
What is being done to retain the people who have kept the government functioning through all sorts of upheaval, ranging from shutdowns to a pandemic? Isn’t it actually a good thing, for example, to have an older IT workforce since they’re the only ones who know the kind of computer programming that is ancient history everywhere except in federal agencies?
What is being done to reward their loyalty and encourage it to continue? Wouldn’t one good way for example be to begin paying them their full benefits, rather than force them to live on partial payments for months and often a year or more?
Maybe it’s time to focus more on the workforce the government has—and will have for the foreseeable future—rather than the one its leaders wish it had.
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