Posted on 07/20/2011 1:14:17 PM PDT by Hojczyk
The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.
The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn’t lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce.
When job security is at a premium, the federal government remains the place to work for those who want to avoid losing a job. The job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43% last year and nearly 100% for those on the job more than a few years.
HUD spokesman Jerry Brown says his department’s low dismissal rate — providing a 99.85% job security rate for employees — shows a skilled and committed workforce. “We’ve never focused on firing people, and we don’t intend to start now. We’re more focused on hiring the right people,” he says.
Too much of a good thing isn’t necessarily a great thing, according to a management expert consulted by USA Today:
San Francisco State University management professorJohn Sullivan, an expert on employee turnover, says the low departure rates show a failure to release poor performers and those with obsolete skills. “Rather than indicating something positive, rates below 1% in the firing and layoff components would indicate a serious management problem,” he says.
In this environment, it indicates something else, too. While the private sector has lost millions of jobs, the federal government hasn’t shed hardly any at all, outside of the temporary Census workers hired last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
this is not unexpected
Just comparing the federal government against the broad spectrum of private sector employment, the average age of entry into the private sector is more like 18 to 22.
Another standard is that for two major sectors of employment ~ USPS and Department of Defense, which are together about 70% of all federal employment, you cannot have a felony on your record. The various federal police agencies AND IRS are a tad tighter than that.
I'd suggest the guy at San Francisco State is probably not a good statistician, or even honest.
Another thought for everyone is that total federal employment hasn't changed very much since 1964. It's sometimes gone up a few thousand, and then down a few thousand.
In the private sector you had maybe 40,000,000 NEW JOBS added during that same period of time.
Lot of those people were released felons and drunk drivers.
Frankly, it's really difficult to compare the federal work force to any other work force. But people persist, particularly those who probably can't get a federal job ~ like that professor.
The computer age should have taken a chunk out of federal employment, as it has in private business. But no, the pathetic agencies of the US government are in the digital dark ages.
It took us over two years to get the Medicare bureaucracy to correct some bozo’s mistaken entry that declared my husband to be “Female,” in spite of his definitely male given name. The plaintive stories of living people being pronounced dead by the Social Security slugs are well known.
The old USSR provided the model for bloated bureaucracy everywhere.
Medicare, though, is contracted out to the PRIVATE SECTOR!
Remember EDS?
So, they couldn't tell the difference between men and women ~ doesn't surprise me a bit. That's like those criminals and perverts who came in as top end appointees with the Obama regime.
We'll soon be rid of them, but EDS or its successor contractor will be with you forever.
Most old goobers actually know how to make change and speak coherent English.
The private sector, though, continues to bloat.
How could you miss that point?
Federal workers do that every day.
And you want us to believe retirees on Social Security can do that?
I spent 33 years as a federal employee, most of it overseas. I can remember only one guy getting canned. He was a good buddy, but he deserved it. We warned him that he could get fired for falsifying his travel vouchers. He was working TDY in west Africa, staying in government quarters, which meant that his per diem was cut in half. He “knew a guy who knew a guy” who got him some blank hotel receipts. When he got back to CONUS, he turned them in and claimed full per diem. Someone must have dimed him out and the establishment came down on him like a ton of bricks. My Agency wanted to yank his clearance, reduce him in grade, stamp a big “T” on his 201 file (for “terminal,” no further promotions) and let him serve out the rest of his career unloading trucks or inventorying paper clips, but the case got kicked to the Justice Department. They fired him with cause, as they wanted to make an example of him. It sure cut down on falsified travel vouchers. He was a GS-14 with about 20 years civilian service, and four years active duty military.
Like to note some of it can be a little subtle ~ and would not have been noticed easily except I was pulling data out of voucher after voucher after voucher from the same employee within seconds of each review.
Do you have the numbers for all federal employment, from 2000 to 2010?
>>Two things I want to see you do ~ hump boonies with a machine gun and attack the Taliban from your chair in front of your TV, and deliver mail in a bad part of Detroit City.
Federal workers do that every day.
And you want us to believe retirees on Social Security can do that? <<
How many WHITE postal carriers deliver mail in a bad part of Detroit City.
Thank you
I've been on the streets of downtown Detroit at 2 AM.
I hadn’t realized that. I’ve turned in a lot of travel vouchers and if there were any discrepancies, they were accidental. In the wake of this guy’s firing, there were a lot of guys who went to the travel accountants who “all of a sudden discovered some mistakes that they’d made.” They paid back a lot of money, but they saved their careers.
I decided to look up the number myself. I don’t think the professor is the one playing with the numbers.
From the goverment’s own data:
http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/ExecutiveBranchSince1940.asp
In 1964 the civilian agencies of the executive branch(no USPS) employed 855000 people.
In 2010 the number had increased to 1360000
That would be a 59% increase.
So much for your ‘total federal employment hasn’t changed much’.
There is a basis for your claim however. It’s when you factor in Department of defense. In 1964 they employed over 1000000 people. Now they employ ~700000. Looks like any peace dividend we once had got eaten up by other departments. I’d say the article had a point about nobody getting fired, just moved side to side.
Even if you use the total including DoD, you still have an increase of about 250K people. Funny how the bulk of that is since Obama.
>Two things I want to see you do ~ hump boonies with a machine gun and attack the Taliban from your chair in front of your TV, and deliver mail in a bad part of Detroit City.
Cute rhetorical ploy you are using here. You use the select few who do decent jobs (though I don’t know that I’d include postmen in the number) as cover for the legions of incompetent or indifferent federal employees.
Nobody in their right mind can argue that somehow the federal government manages to be so perfect in their hiring policies that they NEVER hire incompetent people. As such the negligible firing rate is indicative of a serious problem. No business is so perfect.
>>I’ve been on the streets of downtown Detroit at 2 AM.<<
Unless you had an armed color guard that would be something I would consider to be foolish.
>>letter carriers in bad parts of Detroit <<
Yes, they do bring the welfare check and SSDI checks , don’t they. Wear your uniform and don’t stare at anyone.
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