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.
Most old goobers actually know how to make change and speak coherent English.
Do you have the numbers for all federal employment, from 2000 to 2010?
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.
You say that like a federal job is the ultimate goal. For most people it is not.
I’ve worked extensively with federal workers and contractors. Most seem to work harder at getting out of work than getting anything done.
A director of one dept told it the best - ‘what took me 30 seconds in the civilian world takes me 6 months here’