Federal Employees More Likely to Become Zombies Than Get Fired

If you want job security, the federal government is the place to be. USA Today reported the following:

Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.

The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.

When job security is at a premium, the federal government remains the place to work for those who want to avoid losing a job. The job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43% last year and nearly 100% for those on the job more than a few years.

Some of these workers are so entrenched; I believe they’ve become zombies: mindlessly following the dictates of the bureaucratic machine; feeding on the life blood of taxpayers; cannibalizing businesses with their ridiculous regulations. I guess it’s better to be the living dead, than unemployed.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-07-18-fderal-job-security_n.htm?loc=interstitialskip