Look Out! The Retirement Wave!

"Federal Workforce Faces Onslaught of Retirements" OPM shouted last week. "In the federal government we have a tsunami coming that I call the retirement wave," said OPM Director Linda Springer at a job fair. This latest salvo in the "human capital crisis" crusade brings to mind several thoughts:

• Isn't the rhetoric at best overheated ("onslaught") and at worst in questionable taste ("tsunami")?
• We've been talking about this retirement wave for five years now. So when exactly is it going to happen? As Brian Friel reported way back in 2003, the dramatic statistics about the vast numbers of employees who allegedly are on the verge of leaving are arrived at only by combining the number of employees eligible for regular retirement with those eligible to retire early. But few in government actually do retire early. Why do we continue to artificially make the situation look worse than it is?
• Obviously, there are a lot of baby boomers who are considering when to leave government service. But they're not all the same age, in the same financial boat, or working at the same kind of agency in the same kind of job. That means that there's not a single governmentwide human capital crisis, but rather dozens and dozens of agencies each with their own individual challenges. (That's why we need to jettison the one-size-fits-all civil service system in favor of a more flexible one, right?)
• I understand the motivation for wanting to make the situation seem dire, especially at recruiting events. There's nothing like screaming "We're going to have all kinds of openings once those boomers clear out!" to get the attention of prospective new employees. But if massive numbers of new openings are not in fact going to materialize at any given time, isn't government running the risk of further irritating those young people who already take a pretty dim view of federal service as a career?