Hiring Hispanics for Higher-Paying Jobs

[The Straight Story]

Hiring Hispanics for Higher-Paying Jobs
By Alyssa Rosenberg [e-mail] April 22, 2010

There are a lot of ways to look at pay issues in the federal government. You can try to reconcile specific policies across agencies, as the Office of Personnel Management hopes to do with legislation aimed at standardizing pay and benefits policy for civilians serving overseas. You can look at the architecture of entire pay systems, such as the National Security Personnel System. Or, as OPM does in regular reports on diversity, you can look at who is getting paid how much.

The newest of those reports has some positive -- and also some worrisome -- news for current and potential Hispanic federal employees, who have long been underrepresented in the federal ranks compared to the overall U.S. population.

"While we have made some progress, there is room for improvement in fully drawing on the talents and energies of America's Hispanic citizens at all levels of federal government," OPM director John Berry wrote to President Obama.

From July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, the federal government hired 154,604 permanent workers across all pay grades, of whom 14,142, or 9.2 percent, were Hispanic. During the same period the following year, the government hired 164,859 employees. But the number of Hispanic hires during that period fell to 12,091 -- 7.3 percent of the total. Despite that dip, Hispanics remained 8 percent of the total federal workforce in 2008 and 2009.
...

Bills to improve the diversity of the civil service, especially its senior ranks, have languished in Congress in recent years. But the Obama administration appears to be treating diversity in hiring as a priority.

For example, OPM has reversed a policy blocking agencies from collecting demographic data on workers who apply for federal jobs. Without such information, Berry said, agencies cannot "analyze whether they are effectively recruiting Americans of diverse backgrounds and ... identify and, where possible, eliminate barriers that deny equal access to employment opportunities."

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0410/042210pb.htm

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. What most people do not realize is that demographic data is voluntary among Federal employees and

applicants and any self declaration can not be challenged. If I chose to declare myself an partially disabled Hispanic African American of the Jedi religion, I can and nothing can be done. I personally know of several times and places in the Federal government where mass monkey wrenching like that was done. OPM is relying on flawed data and knows it.