The Aging of the State Government Workforce: Trends and Implications
29 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009 Last revised: 28 Aug 2009
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: Suggested Citation