Aubrey Lovegrove: A Small Increase in Younger Federal Workers & No Big Change In Retirement Eligibility Numbers

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM)has released data that reveals there is an increase in federal workers under 30 by Aubrey Lovegrove. They have also shown that federal workers that can claim retirement show no real significant change. These two demographics are very closely observed as people have been waiting for a sort of retirement tsunami to hit as more and more Boomers reach retirement age.

According to reports of 2017 from the OPM compared to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey of 2019, both have data that show that about 15% of federal workers can retire at this time. The 2017 OPM report also revealed that almost 90% of the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) workers could retire, a percentage which has more than likely increased in the past few years. The same report showed that only 12% of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System workers were eligible for retirement.

The number of people eligible to retire has been looked at very carefully for quite some time for any warnings of a large scale retirement trends caused by Baby Boomers. Still, the number of federal workers retiring that is not postal workers has mostly seen around 60K to 70K for about a decade and a half now. It is noted that there were fewer retirement claims after the 2008 crash, which lasted until 2010.

Postal Service workers going into retirement has been what causes retirement increases from time to time. So why specifically Postal Service workers? This is mainly due to the reduction of the laborforce, offers of early retirement, and buyouts.

2019 numbers show that workers that 60 and older are about 14.1% of federal employees, which was .4 less in 2017. Workers from age 50 to 59 made up 31.6% of federal employees, but that is now 30 percent. Those that are 29 and younger were about 6.1% percent of the federal laborforce in 2017, but that number as increased to 8% so far.

As time goes on, we hope to see an increase of younger workers to take over the eventual open positions of those retiring Baby Boomers.