The Aging of the State Government Workforce: Trends and Implications

29 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009 Last revised: 28 Aug 2009

See all articles by Gregory B. Lewis

Gregory B. Lewis

Georgia State University - Andrew Young School of Policy Studies - Dept. of Public Management & Policy

Yoon Jik Cho

Yonsei University

Date Written: 2009

Abstract

The aging of the Baby Boom generation, combined with the success of the New Public Management in downsizing the federal government, has led to a rapidly aging federal service, a reduced flow of new blood with creativity and updated skills (Lane, Wolf, and Woodard, 2003), and a looming “tsunami” of retirements that is forcing the federal service to reconsider many of its human resource practices. The difficulty of obtaining good data has severely restricted our ability to measure the extent of the problem in the state government workforce. We examine the changing age distribution of that workforce using the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census 5% Public Use Microdata Samples and the 2001-07 American Community Surveys, and find that state workforces are even older and have aged more than the federal civil service, suggesting that they may experience the retirement tsunami sooner. We also examine the effects of this aging on institutional memory, race/ethnicity/gender diversity, and educational qualifications.

Keywords: retirement, workforce planning, state government, public sector workforce

JEL Classification: J00

Suggested Citation

Lewis, Gregory B. and Cho, Yoon Jik, The Aging of the State Government Workforce: Trends and Implications (2009). APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1450764

Gregory B. Lewis

Georgia State University - Andrew Young School of Policy Studies - Dept. of Public Management & Policy ( email )

Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
PO Box 3992
Atlanta, GA 30302-3992
United States

Yoon Jik Cho (Contact Author)

Yonsei University ( email )

Seoul
Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

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