So Will There Really Be a Flood Of Retirees?

Last year, around 105,000 federal workers retired, which was an increase of 24 percent from the previous year with 85,000 people that retired. Due to the 20,000 number jump in retirees, people sounded the alarm on the retirement flood people have been waiting on for quite some time.

However, the retirement numbers for 2019 came out, which showed that under 104,000 federal workers put in for their retirement for this year. This is a decrease.

So does that mean that the retirement flood that everyone has been talking about for years is a lie? Definitely not. Countless research and statistics show that there will be a large percentage of retirees that will make up the population in the coming years. So why is there a decline this year?

This increase in people retiring will not always come all at once every year, but gradually, just as it has been. For example, from ‘08 to ‘17, the average federal retirement was under 62,000 annually, which is quite lower than the current average.

Also, the number of feds that can retire is rising. Since the sixth month of last year, just under 15 percent of the laborforce was eligible to retire. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) forecasts that this will go up to about 30% in a short span of years.

The percentage of people that are eligible to retire, however, range depending on the agency. For instance, about 10 percent of employees in the Homeland Security Department were qualified to retire last year, but it is forecasted to rise to at least 25% in the matter of a few years. The number of people that were eligible to retire at the Housing and Urban Development Department was much higher at 23 percent. It is predicted that this will go up to 45 percent within just four years.

However, this should not be a doom and gloom situation in regards to the laborforce, as agencies have had and still have time to get ready for newer generations that will inevitably make up the majority of the force in the near future. Because they have seen this coming for years and year, there should be strategies that are implemented for hiring the younger generations while maintaining the organization and policies that were followed by those that are retiring.

At this time, OPM is still handling a significant accumulation of applications that need to be processed for retirement, which is why seeing a bit of a decrease this year is good news. That way, these retirement requests can be taken care of, hopefully, before another significant number of feds leave for retirement. The retirement applications that were waiting to be processed went in August went from 17,576 to 17,376 in September and continues to drop. But there is still a lot to go. It doesn’t help that these applications and records of federal workers are all on paper somewhere underground in Pennsylvania.