Uncle Sam’s Recruiters Have Their Hands Full Competing Against the Private Sector

The federal government will face a “daunting” challenge in the coming years as it competes with the private sector for scientists, engineers, nurses and other employees, according to a groundbreaking new report.

The New York Times Job Market provided a grant to the Partnership for Public Service and the National Academy of Public Administration to conduct the study. It’s a rare look at the hiring needs of every major U.S. government agency.

“The federal government is in triple jeopardy,” says Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. “It’s struggling to respond to the talent demands of the 21st century, baby boomers are retiring in record numbers, and the pipeline of available talent to replace them has run dry.”

To address the challenge, the report’s authors recommend that “workforce planning [should not be] just a process owned and performed by human resource professionals but one that evolves to be an essential component of day-to-day management.”

Among the other suggestions from the report: federal agencies should develop recruiting plans and update them annually; the way the federal government classifies jobs must be improved to be made more consistent with the job categories used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and the government should develop state-of-the-art recruitment materials to improve the image of professional government service.

Homeland security
In other government news: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Personnel Management have published in the Federal Register a description of how pay, performance management, labor relations and other human resources systems will work in the Homeland Security Department.