Retirement & Financial Planning Report

A seventh of the federal workforce is already eligible for retirement and almost a third of those onboard today will be eligible in four years, GAO has said.

It said that of current permanent career employees outside the Postal Service, 14 percent are currently eligible and 31 percent of them will be eligible to retire by September 2019. More than 43 percent will be eligible to retire at both HUD and SBA, while other agencies near that level including EPA, Treasury and Transportation.

DHS, with only 23 percent eligible by that time, in fact drags down the government average significantly on its own–nearly every other large agency is above, or just barely below, the 31 percent figure.

Certain occupations, such as air traffic controllers, customs and border protection agents, also are well above the average in terms of retirement eligibility; among current senior executives, more than 60 percent will be eligible to retire within two years.

Such numbers reflect a constantly changing target, since some current employees eligible before those dates will have left by the time those dates arrive. Also, only some employees retire as soon as they are eligible with others remaining on the job years–in some cases many years–beyond first eligibility.

The most recent OPM report on that issue showed that only 15 percent retired in their first year of eligibility, slightly more than half were still working four years after that point, and a quarter were still working nine years past their first eligibility.