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It's no secret that American workers are getting older. Even as millennials become the biggest cohort in the labor force, the median age of all U.S. employees has crept up from 30 to 42 over the past 30 years. But when it comes to getting older, a POLITICO analysis finds, the private sector has nothing on the U.S. government.
The U.S. just elected the oldest new president in history, and Congress, too, has been getting consistently older, with its average age now up around 60.
But the vast majority of the government consists of the 2 million-strong federal civilian workforce. And thanks to slow-moving hiring practices and a huge cohort of baby boomers who haven’t retired at the predicted rates, it has grown significantly older than the American workforce overall. Today, just 17 percent of federal workers are under 35 years old. (In the private sector, almost 40 percent are.) And more than a quarter of federal employees are now older than 55.
In some agencies, the upward age shift is even starker. Sixty nine percent of NASA's workforce is over 45 years old. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it's 70 percent. At the tiny Government Publishing Office, it's even more extreme—80 percent.
In principle, there’s nothing wrong with older workers: They have more experience than younger ones and employers often report that they are more attentive at work. Age discrimination is not just illegal, but strips companies of experience and judgment; it's fair to say that plenty of Silicon Valley companies might benefit from the perspective of a more experienced cohort of employees. But workplaces that shift too far in any direction can suffer. There is evidence that offices with more older workers are less productive and, due to their workers' age, more expensive; health care costs are especially high, and a wave of retirements would leave the government on the hook for a major increase in pension spending. And broadly speaking, if the government is supposed to reflect America accurately—making small and large policy decisions that affect every aspect of the country—it’s only reasonable to expect that the federal workforce should reflect the generational makeup of the country.
Given the stereotypes about government employees, it's easy to assume that federal worker protections have led to a vast army of aging-in-place bureaucrats who simply can't be removed. But organizational experts and former federal human resource managers say the problem is more complicated than that, and more troubling for good governance. They see an ineffective hiring system that is decades out of date. They have spent years warning policymakers that rules and laws were inhibiting their ability to hire and train new employees. The aging of the federal workforce, they say, is a symptom of Washington’s inability to keep up with modern-day management practices and to plan for the future—as well as a system hamstrung by rigid federal employment directives, some of which, ironically, were aimed at freshening up the workforce.
“It’s not so much a matter that old people are stupid and young people are smart,” said Don Kettl, a professor at the University of Maryland who has written extensively on government management. “It’s that smart agencies develop a plan for a pipeline. The federal government’s biggest problem is it’s not very good at pipeline planning.”
Full Article: America’s government is getting old
The U.S. just elected the oldest new president in history, and Congress, too, has been getting consistently older, with its average age now up around 60.
But the vast majority of the government consists of the 2 million-strong federal civilian workforce. And thanks to slow-moving hiring practices and a huge cohort of baby boomers who haven’t retired at the predicted rates, it has grown significantly older than the American workforce overall. Today, just 17 percent of federal workers are under 35 years old. (In the private sector, almost 40 percent are.) And more than a quarter of federal employees are now older than 55.
In some agencies, the upward age shift is even starker. Sixty nine percent of NASA's workforce is over 45 years old. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it's 70 percent. At the tiny Government Publishing Office, it's even more extreme—80 percent.
In principle, there’s nothing wrong with older workers: They have more experience than younger ones and employers often report that they are more attentive at work. Age discrimination is not just illegal, but strips companies of experience and judgment; it's fair to say that plenty of Silicon Valley companies might benefit from the perspective of a more experienced cohort of employees. But workplaces that shift too far in any direction can suffer. There is evidence that offices with more older workers are less productive and, due to their workers' age, more expensive; health care costs are especially high, and a wave of retirements would leave the government on the hook for a major increase in pension spending. And broadly speaking, if the government is supposed to reflect America accurately—making small and large policy decisions that affect every aspect of the country—it’s only reasonable to expect that the federal workforce should reflect the generational makeup of the country.
Given the stereotypes about government employees, it's easy to assume that federal worker protections have led to a vast army of aging-in-place bureaucrats who simply can't be removed. But organizational experts and former federal human resource managers say the problem is more complicated than that, and more troubling for good governance. They see an ineffective hiring system that is decades out of date. They have spent years warning policymakers that rules and laws were inhibiting their ability to hire and train new employees. The aging of the federal workforce, they say, is a symptom of Washington’s inability to keep up with modern-day management practices and to plan for the future—as well as a system hamstrung by rigid federal employment directives, some of which, ironically, were aimed at freshening up the workforce.
“It’s not so much a matter that old people are stupid and young people are smart,” said Don Kettl, a professor at the University of Maryland who has written extensively on government management. “It’s that smart agencies develop a plan for a pipeline. The federal government’s biggest problem is it’s not very good at pipeline planning.”
Full Article: America’s government is getting old