Retirement-eligible acquisition workers to triple in 10 years

Retirement eligibility in the federal acquisition workforce declined slightly in fiscal 2005 but will more than triple by 2015, according to an annual report on the federal acquisition workforce.

The demographic report, published annually by the government's Federal Acquisition Institute based on records from the Office of Personnel Management's Central Personnel Data File, shows statistics for seven acquisition occupations. Figures are broken down by grade level, educational level, turnover, and hiring and retirement eligibility rates, among other variables.

The report drew few conclusions, but presented a broad outline of the government's procurement workforce. Of the nearly 59,500 people who worked in core acquisition roles in fiscal 2005, 60 percent were female, with an average age of 48 and average General Schedule grade level of 10.45. More than half were college graduates and 182 were members of the Senior Executive Service.

Fifteen percent of those counted were eligible for regular retirement in 2005, down slightly from 16 percent in 2004, but by 2015 that number will rise to 57 percent, according to the report.

While OPM officials have warned of an impending "retirement tsunami" hitting the federal government as baby boomers retire, some acquisition professionals say the workforce has its own "bathtub effect." This leaves the extremes of long- and short- term employees relatively well-represented, while workers with five to 15 years' experience are in much shorter supply because of governmentwide personnel reductions in the 1990s.

FAI Director Karen Pica said agencies could use the report to plan training and outreach programs. "Now agencies can plan recruitment and educational programs to ensure appropriate resources are in place to support their customers and continue their missions, and FAI can assist with those efforts to leverage resources across the federal spectrum," she said.

Joshua Schwartz, co-director of the government procurement law program at The George Washington University and co-chair of a federal advisory working group on acquisition workforce issues, said FAI's annual reports have not answered some important questions. Stressing that he had not yet reviewed the new report, Schwartz said, "The larger job of qualitative assessment and planning does need to be done, but it needs to be done agency by agency, anyway."

He pointed to a recommendation provisionally adopted by the advisory panel last month that would require agencies to develop acquisition workforce human capital strategic plans as part of the overall personnel planning process. Those plans would allow an agency to determine how many acquisition workers should be at a particular grade level, as well as how many there are.

Other officials have suggested the growing role of contractors working in the procurement process complicates attempts to count the acquisition workforce. The report noted that while the Government Accountability Office addresses 14 acquisition occupations in its reports, a separate Defense Department counting method identifies about 80 occupations under that umbrella. The FAI report was limited to a small group of occupations, thus allowing comparison between the two systems.