Veterans Employment Data
Yesterday at an event at the Labor Department, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said he wasn't going to set a quota on how many veterans federal agencies should hire, but that his goal would be to increase their numbers year on year. The 2008 figures are out, and they show that veterans have a solid foothold in the federal workforce, even if they aren't a huge presence. Veterans are 8.3 percent of the civilian workforce. Disabled veterans though, appear to face some of the same challenges their disabled civilian peers face in finding federal employment. Disabled vets are only 0.8 percent of the civilian workforce, and 30 percent or more disabled veterans are a mere 0.3 percent of civilian workers. I'd imagine that the actual measurements for how well the initiative succeeds will have be based on the 2009 numbers.
But these figures suggest that the Veterans Employment Council will do well to address issues about how agencies perceive disabled workers, whether they're veterans or not. If people see an applicant's disability rather than their skills, much less their veteran status, they could miss opportunities to hire fantastic workers.
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Alyssa,
The percentages provided are meaningless without the rest of the story. You note that 8.3% of the federal government civilian workforce is comprised of veterans. What is the percentage of veterans in the entire US workforce? The same with the numbers on disabled veterans. Without the other numbers, the percentages mean nothing - 0.8% could be a great number if the total number of disabled veterans was a similar number, and extremely poor if the total number of disabled veterans was a large number.
Would be great to get the rest of the facts and put the situation into perspective.
Anonymous Posted Monday, November 16, 2009 8:41 AMUntil agencies such as the Dept. of Labor make Merit Staffing their primary method of hiring then these numbers will grow slowly, if at all. Less then 25% of bargaining unit hires at the Dept. of Labor were from Merit Staffing the last three years. Current recruiting efforts focus more on college students then the veterans who have honorably served our country.
Dennis DeMay Posted Monday, November 16, 2009 10:01 AMComments from Anonymous and Mr. DeMay - each make good points with which I agree. But, Ms. Rosenberg there's another very important statistical, political and HR issue to this story - -that is the aggregate merit selection requirements for all interest groups as imposed, suggested highly recommended, legally or programmatically required. Specifically -- may I modestly suggest that during OPM press events at which new hiring programs for specific interest groups are discussed that the GovExOnline reporter present ask the OPM officials how the recommended, projected, suggested or required new or additional or revived or restated merit selection, or other hiring vehicles will affect the TOTAL aggregate for ALL interest group hires. GovExOnline has been covering the recent OPM efforts to speed, streamline, improve the federal hiring process, but, alas, I've read no coverage of how the current slow pokey process may be complicated by special interest group hiring requirements. By the way, should GovExOnline decide to explore the relationship between hiring speed and specific interest group elements in the hiring process, you may find a rather unsurprising relationship between the individual virtues, strong political support, sincere concern, social good, and overall right thing to do for EACH special interest hiring emphasis, BUT that in the aggregate such emphasis at minimum significantly slows the hiring process, burdens HR specialists with a daunting series of rules and regs such that the result in a very slow hiring process biased toward least harm, least controversy -- i.e. hiring special interest group members already in federal service. The management price for tripping on one of these mechanisms is significantly in higher than the operational gains of speeding through 50 hiring actions – 1:50 is just my HR 30+ year career based personal ratio, thank you. When Mr.Berry says he's not setting a quota on veteran hires, he scores a lame rhetorical point -- one hopes his speech writer knows that quotas in federal hiring are illegal cuz the Supreme Court says so. But, at DC press events the quota throw away line, generally indicates a politico’s high level nudge to underlings – e.g. HR Directors and their politico masters to increase the hiring emphasis, or something? See what I mean about the aggregate thing -- just where does the Berry vet push fit into the aggregate? Well, I'm sure Mr. Berry will just let the front line feds figure it out while they're awaiting the next OPM pronunciamento on speedy hiring. Just makin bacon in ole DC. Plus ca change.
Concerned Retriee Posted Monday, November 16, 2009 11:50 AMthere isn't any need to set a "goal" all the agencies have to do is follow the "LAW". And dismantle there practices of circumventing vet preference ie presidential fellows
dan m ketter Posted Monday, November 16, 2009 1:17 PM