Recruiting the Next Generation of Feds

MYTH: The federal government immediately defaults when the statutory debt limit is reached. REALITY: The Treasury Department can use extraordinary measures to temporarily avoid default, such as suspending sales of State and Local Government Series Treasury securities, redeeming existing and suspending new investments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, and suspending reinvestment of the Government Securities (G) Fund in the Thrift Savings Plan. These measures provide additional time before default occurs.

and salaries paid to workers in the private sector, as measured by the ECI. As of press time, President Biden had submitted a 2.7 percent average pay increase for federal employees in calendar year 2022—a 2.2 percent acrossthe-board increase with a 0.5 percent average increase to locality pay rates.

Federal retirees, on the other hand, receive cost-ofliving adjustments that are determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and automatically implemented; no executive order or bill is needed. While it may often seem like the COLA is too low, this automatic calculation is removed from the political process. Each year’s COLA is determined by comparing the change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from year to year, based on the average of the third-quarter months of July, August and September. The 2022 COLA was 5.9 percent for Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) annuities and Social Security benefits, and 4.9 percent for Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) annuities.

Notably, COLAs for FERS retirees are unfairly reduced and, therefore, fail to protect these fully earned annuities from the eroding effects of inflation. If the annual CPI-W increase is 3 percent or more, FERS COLAs are reduced by 1 percent. If the CPI-W increase is between 2 percent and 3 percent, FERS enrollees only receive a 2 percent COLA. When the CPI-W increase is under 2 percent, the COLA matches the price index increase.

—BY SETH ICKES, GRASSROOTS ASSISTANT

On October 4, George Mason University hosted “How to Find and Recruit the Next Generation of Federal Employees,” an event organized by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-VA, in concert with Rep. Don Beyer, D-VA, and Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja.

The panel told the students in attendance that the federal government is in dire need of their generation’s skills and labor.

Ahuja made it clear that the government is “facing a significant retirement wave,” as nearly 15 percent of current federal civil servants are over age 60. According to the Biden administration, the number of federal workers under age 30 has decreased in every agency over the last decade.

Ahuja believes that many of the older workers are “hanging around because of the pandemic, as they get to work from home.” Ahuja rationalized this as a blessing in disguise because it has bought the federal government some time before the retirement wave. Once these workers retire, Ahuja made it clear, “we want to not only treasure that institutional knowledge but also make sure that we are passing along everything that they’ve gained in their roles.”

Rep. Connolly described the need for an overhaul of the federal government’s internship program, stating, “In the private sector, going from an intern to being an employee is in the high double digits. In the federal government, it is in the single digits. We have failed utterly at striking an internship opportunity that serves for recruitment.” OPM has introduced some new policies to help with this, such as hiring students who are working on bachelor’s or master’s degrees to temporary appointments, with the capability to move these students to permanent positions within the same organizations when their studies are finished. Connolly also stated that he is currently working on legislation to enhance the federal government’s internship