Federal Workers Kept Clicking on Tech Jobs Months After Shutdown (bloomberg.com) 78
The U.S. government's longest shutdown to date ended a year ago, but the memory may have kept lingering in the minds of federal workers looking for greener pastures in the technology world. From a report: A report released Tuesday by recruiting website Indeed compared clicks by federal employees on private tech jobs against clicks by users not on the federal payroll. That comparison found federal employees' clicks on such jobs were up on average almost 11% in the first 11 months of 2019
compared with 2017. Clicks from the general public fell 7.8% in the same period. The gap is more dramatic between tech workers in the government and private sector. Clicks by federal tech employees on those private-sector jobs were up 6.1% from January 2017 as of November, while clicks from private-sector tech employees fell 21% in the same period. Potential explanations for the divide included advantages for private-sector jobs like higher salaries and the ability to work remotely. Certain tech companies pay an almost 50% premium compared to the federal government, Indeed said.
Makes sense. (Score:1)
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, whether you are working a private or public sector job, you should ALWAYS have savings for that proverbial "rainy day".
If one saves and manages money properly, especially at this level, a few weeks of unemployment should not be catastrophic.
And, unlike the Private sector, in the Federal jobs situation with a temporary shutdown, when the Feds start back to business, your job is guaranteed to be there, AND...you will get back pay for missed days.
In essence, it is more like unplanned paid vacation time, rather than a layoff.
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Last months news next month should be the new slogan.
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Federal workers continued searching for private sector jobs for months after the last Federal government shutdown.
The click part is just how they collected the data, and like any good internet marketer, er, journalist, all they think about is advertising metrics.
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Benjamin Franklin said, "The best thing we can do for the poor is to make them uncomfortable."
Not that I agree with that, but that is how many people feel.
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Re:Makes sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
We're in the midst of what is considered by nearly all quarters as an excellent economy. With even a small modicum of skill, you can find and get a higher-paying job with little effort right now in most areas.
If you don't have (or aren't building up) a savings nest-egg right now, then either you have astoundingly bad luck in life (it happens), or you're blowing too much money on crap.
Or, you're just being a partisan hack in an election year. Be a better person already.
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We're in the midst of what is considered by nearly all quarters as an excellent economy. ....
When 1% of the people reap 85% of the gains in this record-breaking economy, using the word "we" is contra-indicated.
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Stop getting high on partisan supply - even the eeeevil "one percent" isn't reaping anything at the expense of anyone else (see also how investing actually works. Or did you think they stuffed it all under mattresses, or put it in a giant vault and swam it in Scrooge McDuck style?)
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You sound clueless to the fact that people have been living that way (paycheck to paycheck) for decades and decades. This isn't a "Trump/MAGA" thing, this is a kick-the-can-down the road mentality, on the part of both politicians AND citizens, and it you look at Detroit and other cities run by Dems, you can plainly see their policies have been disasters, but you trash the GOP only.
You'll find the oldest people, those who were alive during the depression, became very frugal with their expenditures and credit
Re: Makes sense. (Score:2)
You didn't invalidate parent poster's points, you just managed to make a partisan blue-vs-red issue, seasoned with a little everyone-who's-in-hardship-had-it-coming, out of his legitimate concerns.
Admitted, bringing Trump/MAGA into the discussion wasn't the best of his ideas, but everything else from his post pretty much stands on its own and accurately describes the core of the probem. Including his summary that America is by far not to be considered a 1st world country anymore.
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If Mexico is a 2, then USA is definitely a 1, because surely N. Korea is clear a 3 which would obviously make Mexico a 2.
Maybe we need a bigger scale :D
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This is a big part of why the paycheck-to-paycheck culture exists.
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Re:Makes sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
He there -- you are obviously clueless to the reality that half of all American families have no appreciable savings and are living paycheck to paycheck. many a mere $1,000 in unexpected emergency expense from financial hardship, even homelessness.
Much to the contrary, the fact that too many people don't have reasonable savings is an even stronger reason to evangelize the need to have reasonable savings. The more US culture can change to be pro-savings, the better (given where we are now). This was the culture after the Great Depression, when everyone had learned the hard way. It's just needs to be taught.
We should be teaching basic financial responsibility in high schools, at the very least (and in some places this is done, but clearly not enough). Fun fact: having parents who teach you about money is a better predictor of your wealth as an adult than having parents who are rich, but don't teach you.
Re: Makes sense. (Score:2)
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Federal jobs situation with a temporary shutdown, when the Feds start back to business, your job is guaranteed to be there, AND...you will get back pay for missed days.
Civil service people got back pay but for many agencies most of the people working at federal facilities i.e. NASA centers are contractors. Many of them including those who work for major contractor services did NOT get back pay. There are still lingering damages from all that but then it seems all part of a plan to dismantle government agencies.
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Well, that is the nature of contracting no matter if you are Federal or Private contractors.
Part of contracting is negotiating your bill rate to allow for rainy day savings for when between paying contracts.
If you don't know how to play the contractor game, you likely should not
Re:Makes sense. (Score:4, Informative)
when the Feds start back to business, your job is guaranteed to be there, AND...you will get back pay for missed days.
Technically, no. The job is not guaranteed nor is back-pay.
Congress has authorized back pay after every shutdown, but they don't have to. Congress could also eliminate jobs during the shutdown, but have not done so in past shutdowns.
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Not guaranteed in the sense you think. el Presidente Tweetie tried to disband (Office of Personnel Management) OPM but that didn't fly, mostly because they had no plan to replace the functions it serves. The reason was that he couldn't understand what it did. Well, he wouldn't as the explanation takes more than a page and cannot be reduced to pictures.
Then he decided the science arm of the Ag. Dept would be better served in Nebraska where the scientists are not because he doesn't like science. He would if h
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On the other hand, government wages haven't nearly increased as much as the private sector in the last year, primarily due to contractors and union rules. If you're in the governments tech arms for long-terms without being a contractor, you're doing it wrong.
This isn't limited to technical workers (Score:4)
There are hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors to companies that provide services to federal departments that were affected. Is it any surprise that these people crave stability in their employment and income?
As far as I'm concerned, any failure that results in shutdown needs to affect the elected officials, including having no option to retroactively pay themselves after they pass the budget.
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100% agree.
The decision makers are never affected and always get paid during a shutdown. everyone else can go get stuffed is their opinion. As the GOP stated during the shutdown, "just go to your bank for a short term loan to pay your bills", since were not going to pay you for an honest days work.
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As far as I'm concerned, any failure that results in shutdown needs to affect the elected officials, including having no option to retroactively pay themselves after they pass the budget.
The problem with this is only the relatively poor politicians are affected by it, and it's the relatively poor politicians who are not pushing to shut down the government. The wealthy ones (which admittedly is probably the majority) make way more money from other sources and their federal pay isn't necessary for them to survive.
What we need is voters to stop re-electing ideologues who think shutting down the government is a good tactic to get their budget priorities passed. We also need to return to somet
Shutdown not a tactic (Score:3, Insightful)
Shutdowns are not a tactic to achieve some goal; for Republicans the shutdowns ARE the goal. What better way to get a "small government" than to force workers to quit to feed their families. Then the tasks federal employees used to do can be contracted to their friends and donors in the private sector.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The contractors were not necessarily paid after the shutdown, it was up to their company. Reagan decided many functions of the federal government could be farmed out to the private sector. The private sector said thank you very much and promptly proceeded to fleece the government for everything not nailed down.
They don't call them Beltway Bandits for nothing. Now that Republicans don't believe in free enterprise anymore preferring Government Industrial Policy (read: shades of fascism (the textbook definitio
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Federal, state and local governments employ 22.2
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Don't forget soldiers.
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Most servicemen/women only last a few years. There's high turnover.
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Indeed - most quit after their first enlistment - usually 4 years. IIRC, less than 20% of Enlisted hang around for the 20+ year ride to retirement; the percentage of officers is likely the same or perhaps lower given the political hazards they have to deal with as they climb the ranks. From my experience back in the day, at least in the USAF, if you re-enlist after the end of your second enlistment (~year 8), you were going to grunt it out for 20. Few people did that by the time I got out (1991), doubly so
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The entrenched bureaucracy is what ensures our nation's long-term interests are pursued and that understanding of complex issues throughout decades is maintained.
We can restructure to an MBA mentality, but it'll fall apart between every administration, kind of like how the MBA mentality has destroyed long-term corporate profits for short-term gains that ultimately doom companies.
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The entrenched bureaucracy is what ensures our nation's long-term interests are pursued
Indeed, long after there should have been a re-evaluation of long term interests, the old ones continue to be pursued thanks to entrenched bureaucracy.
We can restructure to an MBA mentality, but it'll fall apart between every administration
Hypothetical case, when we already know entrenched bureaucracy is dragging the country into things like decades long military presence in some countries.
kind of like how the MBA mentali
Re:Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me, I think Apple and Google and Facebook would like a word with you.
Excuse me, I think IBM, Yahoo and HP would like a word with you.
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Excuse me, I think IBM, Yahoo and HP would like a word with you.
All companies that are still around and doing fine, if not as strong as they once were.
Next!
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All companies that are still around and doing fine, if not as strong as they once were.
First, one of them no longer exists.
Second, all of them have been greatly damaged by abandoning long-term planning. The fact that they are not "as strong as they once were" is the point - they suck compared to the behemoths they used to be.
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Wait, who's long-term interests are pursued? Typically bureaucracy sustains itself and nothing else. To hell with MBA mentality. How about "federal officials do the will of the people based on election results" mentality?
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Who elected them? The constitution and all other founding documents were based on *preventing precisely that*.
These people are almost completely unaccountable for their actions, that is anathema to individual liberty.
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They're about as accountable as any person working for a large company or division.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
The entrenched bureaucracy is what ensures our nation's long-term interests are pursued and that understanding of complex issues throughout decades is maintained.
What interests would those be? Outsourcing of labor, middle east adventures that kill millions and drive refugees into Europe, importation of H1Bs and other immigrants in order to drive down labor costs? Granted I'm not one of these professional bureaucrats so I might be missing a few things but to me, it appears they work for the interests of a few elites that benefit from such things and not the greater population of Americans.
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kind of like how the MBA mentality has destroyed long-term corporate profits for short-term gains that ultimately doom companies.
Corporate profits, by almost any measure you care to name, are extremely high. Much higher than they have been in the past. So high that economists consider it a warming sign that there isn't enough competition. So, apparently the MBA mentality hasn't destroyed profits.
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Federal jobs should be few and temporary. Creating public permanent jobs is what leads to a permanent "civill servant" mentality, like the real power behind European governments, where unelected civil servants hold all the power while tolerating and "managing" the effect of elected officials. They hold all the power and are almost completely insulated from the results of elections, and thus any accountability. It has been building this way for years (and in particular, 88 years, since 1932, when the "Three Letter Agency" was born) and now you see the results - The Swamp.
This needs to be wiped out as both unconstitutional and demonstrably rotten.
How does Boris Johnson fit into your narrative?
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About as much as Vladimir Putin.
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Yeah, you really want everyone in government to have no idea what's going on or how to do anything. That sounds wonderful.
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Being incompetent when *their functions shouldn't be done in the first place* is a feature, not a bug. 95% of current Federal government functions were supposed to be *entirely precluded by the Constitution*. The few actual defined functions - common defense and law enforcement chief among them - most people here consider "the enemy", for some reason.
The Federal government is constructed to try to prevent it working like it does in the dead-end cultures of Europe, and like the king and
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Jesus you are a idiot. So every few years we get reinvent the government functions because all the institutional memory is gone.
Grandma Buck: Hello, SS, my checks are coming late, and I have Medicare questions
Government Worker New on the Job: Uh...who are you? Why do you think you should get checks? What's Medicare?
Grandma Buck: Hello Brett, I'm coming to live with you as partial repayment for screwing up my SS and Medicare.
By the way, save up for her meds, they are expensive.
Work Stability is of Extreme Value (Score:4, Insightful)
We have enough stressors in life and one of the worst is income instability. If workers are not confident that they will be continually employed and they're not making enough money to comfortable sock away 6+ months of salary within an unstable work environment, they'll look for work elsewhere. Politicians saying, "You can't work or get paid because we're intransigent assholes." doesn't bode well for a sense of stability.
Feds always get paid, eventually. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Unfortunately, other entities don't particularly like waiting to get paid eventually.
Try telling your supermarket to just wait a couple months for you to pay for your food.
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The Feds are running short on cash. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Contractors can be hired/fired rapidly (unlike union-represented federal employees) so they are the first to feel the effects.
It's smart for federal employees to start looking elsewhere. Cash will run short again, and no amount of political grandstanding or kleptocratic policies will change that fact. Question is, when the Feds slide into insolvency, where do you seek shelter?
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Ehhhh, go with that if you want. There's deep debt and out-of-control spending leading to deficits. The once-spendthrift Republicans aren't doing anything to stop it, and the Democrats want to spend tens of trillions on all kinds of stuff. The fix is in: 2026 will be an ugly year for the feds. Not sure how the rest of the economy will respond to that. Probably not well.
Pay may be better but... (Score:3)
The other joke is that if you're a Federal employee and worried about the imminent collapse of your employer, you've probably got bigger, more immediate problems to deal with than whether you'll have a job to go to on Monday.
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Same for contractors if you've a brain. Any minute over 40hrs was 1.5 or 2 times regular (depending) and was rounded up to the 15 minute increment always. That applied to phone calls as well. Each.
I've contracted to government IT many times. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've contracted to government IT many times. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean I work at a university - which is state level - I'd take most any of the people who work here over anyone I think - I've never met a bunch of people who can do so much with so little. We easily finish 20+ major projects every year - many of which require actual programming skills.
I feel like most private firms hire contractors to fix major issues they have (just speaking with friends who work in healthcare for example).
It is the economy stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
That someone tried to tie this to the year old federal shutdown is just ignorant of the few federal employees effected by it and the previous economy shifts.
The one time I saw Trump's poll numbers dip (Score:2)
What this means is that 2-4% of Trumps supporters work for the Federal Gov't, which given that his party rails non-stop against government jobs and government employees is kinda nuts.
Clicks tapered off when... (Score:4, Funny)
After clicking on enough listings to get the message that the gold plated healthcare benefits, pension, union protection, annual vacation time, etc. didn't exist in the private sector they stopped clicking on jobs listings and resumed their normal porn consumption.
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Of course (Score:3)
Once you have gone to the work of updating your resume, website, linked-in etc, might as well sent it out and see what options you have.
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The ones looking are the ones likely needed (Score:1)
Actual TFA (Score:2)
The first graph in TFA appears to support the hypothesis of interest in tech sector jobs growing more among government workers than the general public after the 2019 shutdown. However, they have been indexed to Jan 2017 (both lines set to 100). For all I know, that may have been a localized low in tech job interest by government workers. Also, it's taken from the entire population (both tech workers and non-tech workers). Changes in t percentage
another explanation (Score:3)
Let's talk reality (Score:2)
First, feds are freaking *tired* of the GOP shutting down the US government for fake reasons[1], to do minority rule.
Second, that's from federal sites... but more than half of the US government has been bloody outsourced[2], and the fact is that contractors DO NOT GET PAID FOR THE GOVERNMENT BEING SHUT DOWN.[3]
1. If the GOP actually was worried about deficits, why did they cut taxes for companies and the rich as soon as they had the power? The deficit *always* balloons under the GOP.
2. I just retired from 1
Good news (Score:1)
Normal (Score:1)