More on the 3Rs Incentives

The Obama administration, via Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry, has been attempting to tighten up use of recruitment, retention, and relocation incentive payments for some time now. And now we've finally got extensive data on the use of those incentives in 2008, the last year for which numbers are available. More on this to come on Monday, but a few things to note:

-The payments aren't that big: The average relocation incentive is $13,000, the average retention payment is $6,284, and the average recruitment incentive is $7,543. This isn't private-sector signing-bonus money. And it's one-time payments. $6,284 is not a lot of money to accept to stay in a job, particularly if you're walking away from a long-term higher salary and greater earnings potential.

-The payments are in the fields where there are shortages: 11 percent of recruitment incentives went to "patient examiners," 5.64 percent to "practical nurses," 3.69 percent to pharmacists, and 3.60 percent to nurses. 6.09 percent of retention incentives went to nurses, and 5.96 percent to "practical nurses."

-The payments were relatively proportional throughout the workforce: General Schedule employees make up 66 percent of the federal workforce, and they got 65 percent of the benefits.