Improving the Recruitment, Retention, and Utilization of Federal Scientists and Engineers (1993) / Chapter Skim
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2 THE CHANGING EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
2 THE CHANGING EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
Pages 27-36
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From page 27... ...
The passage of the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA) in late 1990 had an equally dramatic effect on the internal recruitment and retention situation within the federal government.
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From page 28... ...
Favorable Changes Given current conditions, the federal government is in a relatively favorable competitive position for recruitment and retention of scientific and engineering talent for the following reasons: The economy has been suffering an unusually long recessionary period, and it is unclear when the economy will emerge from this condition of relative stagnation. The current recession has reduced private-sector opportunities.
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From page 29... ...
However, if the private sector and the government increase investment in research and development to meet the challenge of international economic competition, the demand for highly qualified researchers may increase. Similarly, academic labor markets are currently sluggish.
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From page 30... ...
be more successful in holding on to outstanding scientists and engineers who ordinarily would have been lost to the private sector? Economic conditions thus place the federal government in a more favorable position today than in the 1980s to compete for highly qualified scientists and engineers and keep experienced federal scientists and engineers who otherwise might leave for higher-paying jobs in the private sector.
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From page 31... ...
The number of experienced scientists and engineers who will be retiring from the federal workforce is expected to increase dramatically in the 1990s. This set of factors involves the aging of the federal science and engineering workforce.
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The GAO report concluded that labor market adjustments would be adequate to replace NASA's senior technical workforce, given projected retirement plans, but it noted that those plans could change depending on events. As noted above, the state of the economy is another factor reducing retirement rates among eligible civil servants now.
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From page 33... ...
Meanwhile, the expected decline in supply of scientists and engineers with advanced degrees could be offset by various market adjustments, of course, such as an increase in the proportion of science and engineering majors, reentry of workers with science and engineering training now working outside the science and engineering labor markets, greater use of foreign nationals, and conversions of scientists and engineers from fields with less demand, such as defense engineering, to growing fields, such as environmental protection. Will the federal government be ready to take advantage of these adjustments?
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From page 34... ...
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES To carry out its various missions, the federal government directly employs more than 200,000 scientists and engineers. Although turnover rates have been relatively low, they increased during most of the 1980s.
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From page 35... ...
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War set the stage for significant cutbacks in defense and nuclear weapons programs, thus significantly reducing the overall demand for the 70 percent of federal engineers and 32 percent of federal scientists employed by DOD and DOE. FEPCA inaugurated a process for achieving near pay comparability in each locality and also authorized the use of many of the flexibility mechanisms being used in the demonstration projects.
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From page 36... ...
In conclusion, the federal government today is in a better position to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by reduced demand, budget cutbacks, and FEPCA to plan and manage a higher quality science and engineering workforce that can more effectively meet the needs of each department and agency. The next chapter describes the origins and lessons of the personnel management demonstration projects, which were developed largely to deal with the problems of recruiting and retaining scientists and engineers in the federal personnel system.
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