Federal workforce growing more diverse, says OPM

The federal government's workforce grew more diverse in fiscal 2007, but women and Hispanics still are underrepresented when compared to the civilian labor force, according to a new report from the Office of Personnel Management.

"Once again, this year's report shows the federal government is committed to building a high-performance workforce drawn from the strengths of America's diversity," OPM Director Linda Springer wrote in the introduction to the annual report on the Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program.

The study, which analyzed agencies with 500 or more permanent workers, found that 32.8 percent of federal employees were minorities in fiscal 2007 as compared to 28.2 percent of the civilian labor force.

African-American representation grew in government by 0.2 percent, from 17.6 percent to 17.8 percent, between 2006 and 2007, while representation in the civilian labor force stayed constant at 10.1 percent. The number of Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans rose by 0.1 percent in both the federal and civilian workforces. Asian/Pacific Islanders made up 5.3 percent of the federal workforce and 4.3 percent of the civilian labor force in 2007, while Native Americans were 2.0 percent of the federal workforce, and 0.7 percent of the civilian labor force.

But the federal government lags behind the civilian labor force in the employment of Hispanics. Just 7.8 percent of the permanent federal workforce is Hispanic, OPM found, as compared to 13.3 percent of the civilian labor force. That gap widened between 2006 and 2007; Hispanic participation in the civilian labor force rose 0.5 percent during that year, while rising 0.2 percent in the federal workforce.

Women also are underrepresented in the federal workforce, though by a smaller margin -- 43.9 percent of the federal workforce was female in 2007, compared to 45.7 percent of the civilian labor force. Women's employment in the federal government did not grow from 2006 to 2007, though in the civilian labor force it rose by 0.3 percent.

OPM also found that the number of Hispanics in General Schedule grades 13 through 15 declined 2.8 percent from 2006; the number of women in those grades decreased by 4.2 percent; and the number of African-Americans in that group fell by 3.3 percent. That drop is attributed, in part, to promotions of candidates to senior positions. But greater representation among females, Hispanics and African-Americans in senior jobs make up only a portion of the overall decline in their representation among the GS 13 to 15 ranks. For all other minority groups, the increase in senior position representation exceeded the decline among GS grades 13 to 15.

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., has warned that without diverse "successor pools," the Senior Executive Service could become less diverse as the retirement wave hits the federal government and there are not enough minority candidates at agencies to replace departing executives. Davis has introduced a bill (H.R. 3774) that would promote diversity within the SES.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Christine Griffin said it was past time for OPM to begin tracking the employment of disabled people in the federal workforce.

"I would hope that since people with disabilities are included in [H.R. 3774] that there will be some acknowledgement that EEOC's data will be relied on to measure success of the diversity efforts or that there will be some other way of collecting that information," she said. Davis's bill also would require OPM to regularly track diversity data, and include disability as a diversity category.