This is the usual poorly-reseached article about federal employees.
First, The “administrative” agencies presently recruit college graduates who meet the Distinguished Scholar criteria. Law Enforcement, DOD, scientific, legal fields have their own specific criteria.
Today, few clerical or blue-collar positions exist in the Federal Government. This is due to the advancement of EDP systems in all agencies.
Second, new federal employees are probtionary for their first 3 years. A percentage are terminated in those 3 years.
A higher persentage voluntarily leave an agency for numerous reasons, personal and professional.
Three, tenured employees usually last for a career, as is true outside of government. A percentage are terminated for poor performance, violations of law and regulations, or “for the good of the service”. Some do resign/retire before action can be taken against them.
I’ve worked in several federal agencies in which I dealt with state and municiple agencies. In my experience, federal employees are generally better than state and local government employees.
As with any human endeavor, there is that 2 percent who are below average.
I work with federal employees daily and if they cut man power 50% I doubt I’d see any loss of productivity. Poor performance and blatant incompetence is usually grounds for promotion which is the only way to get rid of people in a hurry otherwise you spend years laying out the documentation needed to get rid of a government (AFGE Union) employee.
There’s over 206,000 so called blue collar federal wage service employees.. no small number but far less then the other pay categories I’ll agree.
From February 2000 to January 2006, median years in tenured federal service dropped from 11.5 years to 9.9 years.
....there is that 2% percent who are below average.
I’ll disagree there and say it’s closer to the low teens. State and local it’s probably much higher.