Federal Contractors losing jobs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1 contractor I know at State was laid off a month or two ago.

Yes, typically direct hire employees are cheaper in total cost than contractors, but they are getting rid of those too.

How is that possible with benefits, retirement, etc.?

Typical body shop contractor markup is maybe 80-100%. This means if contractor's direct employee has $x in pre-tax salary then government is charged (1.8 * x) to (2 * x) dollars.

The pass-thru markup typically is 8% to 10%. So for subcontractors who are 1099s (on the same contract) who get paid $x, the government gets charged (1.08 * x) to (1.1 * x) dollars.

Federal employees usually cost less than a direct employee of the contractor. For subcontractors who are 1099s, the subcontractors often are cheaper than civil service, but not always.

My part of the government is not in the budget. We are pure fee for service, so I have visibility into the fully burdened costs of a civil service employee.

Imagine if the federal government had the same system of appending a percentage of the total salaries and benefits of support staff and management to each FTE's hourly rate to get the true cost of a federal employee.

Huh? DP here, and we do. Use it for billing, and for cost analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1 contractor I know at State was laid off a month or two ago.

Yes, typically direct hire employees are cheaper in total cost than contractors, but they are getting rid of those too.

How is that possible with benefits, retirement, etc.?

Typical body shop contractor markup is maybe 80-100%. This means if contractor's direct employee has $x in pre-tax salary then government is charged (1.8 * x) to (2 * x) dollars.

The pass-thru markup typically is 8% to 10%. So for subcontractors who are 1099s (on the same contract) who get paid $x, the government gets charged (1.08 * x) to (1.1 * x) dollars.

Federal employees usually cost less than a direct employee of the contractor. For subcontractors who are 1099s, the subcontractors often are cheaper than civil service, but not always.

My part of the government is not in the budget. We are pure fee for service, so I have visibility into the fully burdened costs of a civil service employee.

Imagine if the federal government had the same system of appending a percentage of the total salaries and benefits of support staff and management to each FTE's hourly rate to get the true cost of a federal employee.

I am the PP you quoted.

My part of the government has done exactly that for decades now. Many different parts of the government do the same calculations. That is how I know that civil service people are lower net cost to the government than most contractors are.

As I noted above, people who are 1099 subcontractors under the prime contractor vary in cost. A few are more expensive than civil service, but most 1099s are cheaper than civil service. (The 1099s generally have no benefits of any kind - no corporate 401(k) with matching, no insurance, no PTO, nothing.).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

We have fewer federal employees compared to total population than we did in the past.

[Anonymous]

Contractors are used when the government wants the flexibility to staff up for finite or indeterminate periods of time, but not indefinitely. Normally, a caveat which wouldn't have been necessary in years past, government employees have considerable job security; once hired, they are (were) rarely terminated involuntarily before retirement eligibility. These days, things are obviously different, but contracting still offers the government a way to hire people for what are anticipated to be temporary needs. Contracting is also a way to hire SMEs at higher salaries than allowed by the government's pay scales.

[Anonymous]

Never answer the question asked. Deflect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never answer the question asked. Deflect.

Original question was whether civil service employees are more cost-effective.

People have truthfully answered directly that civil service people are the lowest cost and most cost effective in the majority of cases. No deflection. Straight answers with detailed explanations of how the contractor costs work. (And fwiw I am NOT in the civil service.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never answer the question asked. Deflect.

Original question was whether civil service employees are more cost-effective.

People have truthfully answered directly that civil service people are the lowest cost and most cost effective in the majority of cases. No deflection. Straight answers with detailed explanations of how the contractor costs work. (And fwiw I am NOT in the civil service.)

+1
But need to consider value and long term. They become very expensive if they are complacent dead weight and the contractors are actually doing the work. Then it's a redundant expense, as cost effective as it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

USG employees 2.7M people. Out of which 1.3M are active duty people! And they are hiring more ICE personnel. Walmart employees 2.1M

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

This is such an ignorant statement.

First, "largest single employer" does not mean a lot of people work there. On any pie chart, one slice is biggest but that doesn't mean it is large compared to the rest of the pie.

Second and more important - government work exists to subsidize our (previously) strong private economy. By which I mean government science is the basis for nearly all private medical and technical innovation, government transportation policy is the reason you can ship your product or travel easily, fiscal policy and trade diplomacy are the reason we have so much investment here, as well as access to overseas markets.
Literally none of the economic success of the last 70 years was possible without all those government employees. So yes, it's fiscally healthy for a nation to invest in itself and its people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

The largest number of USG employees (as well as waste, fraud and abuse) is the military/DoD. Last I checked, they are getting a large increase in funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

We have fewer federal employees compared to total population than we did in the past.

This argument is a total red herring. The value added to our country by pooling funds to sustain the many public goods we share is enormous, and the cost to each individual by taking on those burdens or doing without the public good is not sustainable. The more we can share these burdens, the better will be our collective AND individual fiscal health.
Just to name a few of the many public goods individuals would not be able to pay for, nor private companies benefit by supplying them:
national defense, street lighting, clean air, public parks, and basic scientific research

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am working as a contractor at a Federal agency (FINREG), and my employer is hiring A LOT of IT people. I was hired three months ago and the salary is 220K/yr.

Which FinReg is hiring?

[Anonymous]

This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t 2000 NASA staff just up and quit? Who’s gonna do these contractor jobs? Same with state department, saw a crap ton lost their jobs this week.

No, the NASA staff were forcibly RIFed.