24% Increase in Federal Retirement Claims in the 2018 Fiscal Year

November 17, 2018

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″ el_class=”section section1″][vc_column_text]People are always retiring from their federal jobs and according to the latest data from the office of personnel management, a 24% increase in the number of federal employees who filed for retirement was recorded in the 2018 fiscal year. This was in contrast to the previous year, 2017.

September is usually the last month of the government’s fiscal year and according to some statistics published earlier this month by OPM show the number of employees that filed for retirement to be 7,142. With that addition, the total federal retirement claims summed up to 105,298 for the 2018 fiscal year. This recorded a 24.1% increase in the number of retirement claims comparing with the previous year which only had 84,807.

Federal employee retirement is an exciting topic, and recently it was noted that federal employees work for a bit longer than those in the private sector. For instance, in July the number of the federal workforce that was eligible to retire stood at 14% and to show the aging workforce that percentage is expected to jump up to 30% in five years time.

After President Donald Trump’s election, speculation of feds leaving agencies due to disputes over departmental missions consideration by leaders shot up. This was a hypothesis that had no data to back it up until recently when fiscal 2017 indicated that there was a 10% decrease in the number of federal employees that filed for retirement as compared to fiscal 2016.

According to Donald Kettl who is a professor, and the academic director at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, a combination of factors led to the increase in retirements as compared with the previous fiscal year.

Well, Kettl pointed out that the federal workforce is significantly older than that of the private sector. This, therefore, means that the inevitable might eventually be happening especially with the stock market as workers decide to cash in finally. On the other side, there is the Trump effect where some federal employees may choose to leave because of the rising tensions as well as the proposed reorganizations in some agencies.

There has been another possible factor brought about by the Trump administration’s efforts aimed at reducing the federal government’s personnel costs. The last two white house budget proposals have seen officials propose to cut retirement benefits for the current retirees as well as future ones in a bid to reduce the overall cost incurred as much as possible. Trump himself has also backed a pay freeze for federal civilian employees this coming year. However, it is highly expected that lawmakers will overrule trump’s pay freeze decision as it is based mainly on oppressing federal employees.

According to the acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert, she suggested that federal employees were not necessarily in the government for pay sometime last week. Some recent data showed that compensation is very significant when someone is deciding on whether to retire or not. The Obama’s administration used pay freeze for federal employees from 2011 to 2013 while locality pay was frozen as from 2010 to 2015.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”34602″ img_size=”292×285″ style=”vc_box_shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row]