Employment Opportunity

Federal Government Recruiting Talent Ahead of 'Retirement Tsunami'

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 1, 2006; 1:45 PM

Uncle Sam still wants you -- now perhaps more than ever before.

The Office of Personnel Management launched a media campaign today to try to entice more talented people to work for the federal government. The reason: About 60 percent of the government's 1.8 million strong civilian workforce will be eligible to retire over the next 10 years. Experts think at least 40 percent of the workforce will take the plunge.

That could leave the federal bureaucracy short of talent and expertise as the government performs services as diverse as screening airline baggage, protecting wetlands and conducting medical research. The problem is especially acute at the highest levels of career civil servants, with 90 percent of the Senior Executive Service eligible for retirement during the next decade.

"We often call it the retirement 'tsunami,' " OPM Director Linda M. Springer said today during an address at the National Press Club. "It's a big number, and we've got to get ready for it. . . . We haven't done the job that we should in making government opportunities well known."

One way officials are getting ready is by running a series of four, 30-second television ads starting next week that feature current federal employees touting the work they do and the joys of federal service. The ads, which cost $100,000 to produce, will air for two weeks in the Flint and Saginaw region of Michigan and in the Greenville-Spartanburg area of South Carolina at a cost of $84,000.

OPM picked those regions, Springer said, because they have inexpensive advertising rates and are home to tens of thousands of college-age young people who are in the market for a job. But the ads soon will run in other areas as well.

Nobody else is hiring, so this may be the best opportunity around for this year's college grads.