Brain drain
Half of all federal workers can retire in five years. will government be able to replace them?
Vila Hunter, 80, has been a fixture at the Department of Veterans Affairs for 56 years--and isn't about to leave. She came to Washington in 1942 from the family dairy farm in Wisconsin to work at the War Production Board. She went home after the war but soon returned to Washington and has been working at the VA ever since--currently compiling dozens of statistical reports. "There's a great deal of detail, but it's not drudgery," she says. "It's a matter of providing accurate information so that everything can work properly."
Hunter, certainly, is a national treasure. She also is an anomaly in the federal workforce, having stayed on way past the age at which many of her colleagues have retired. Indeed, the labor pool of 1.6 million civilians--the largest in the country, with 85 percent of its members outside Washington--is facing a retirement crisis. Roughly half of current employees will be eligible to retire between now and the end of 2008--including almost 70 percent of supervisors. More than 7,100 air traffic controllers, many of whom were hired after President Reagan fired striking controllers in 1981, could leave over the next nine years as they hit the mandatory retirement age of 56. That's close to half the agency's current roster. Though hiring at many agencies has picked up in recent years, replacements will be needed for a vast number of positions that are opening up after a period of hiring freezes and lackluster recruiting.
The graying extends across the board and transcends political debate about how much government should do. Scientists and engineers who are over 60 at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration outnumber those under 30 by nearly 3 to 1. Because of downsizing in the '90s "we weren't replenishing our workforce," says Vicki Novak, NASA's assistant administrator for human resources. It's estimated that 43 percent of the 650,000 civilians at the Department of Defense--far and away the largest federal employer of civil servants--will be eligible to retire in the next five years. Government wide, 60 percent of federal employees are over 45, compared with 31 percent in the private sector. The largest single block--311,000 post-World War II baby boomers--is in the 50-to-54 age range, followed by 305,000 who are 45 to 49. Among the government's 62,000 computer operations specialists, nearly 80 percent are over 40.
The coming "brain drain" is the result of many factors: benefits that can encourage federal workers to leave after they have put in their 30 years (sometimes to pursue a second career), the frustration with bureaucracy and outdated personnel practices, and more lucrative opportunities outside the federal cocoon. Some of those reasons make it difficult for federal agencies to lure the best to replace the departed. "There's often a negative attitude about government work today," says Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and chairman of the blue-ribbon National Commission on the Public Service.
Inducements. To stem the outflow, the feds are fighting back with retention bonuses and other financial attractions, but the case of William Campbell shows the scope of the challenge facing those who manage the federal troops. Campbell's 30 years of government service have found him writing regulations for oil tankers, helping develop navigation systems and managing finances for the U.S. Coast Guard, and, most recently, holding a top human resources post at the Department of Veterans Affairs. "My boss called me in for 45 minutes to convince me to stay," says Campbell, but the financial inducements for leaving--including a pension of about $80,000 a year--are hard to ignore. He estimates that staying with the government for an additional five to eight years could cost him as much as $900,000 in lost income compared with what he could earn by combining a pension with a second career. "I am not complaining," he says. "To many Americans my compensation is a princely sum. But I can't ignore the numbers."
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