Federal employees and 2025 vacations?

[Anonymous]

I don’t see why taking a vacation matters for any of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actual RIFs seem very unlikely to me. Of course no one knows but if they have any brains at all they’ll just rely on attrition.

This. There will be a hiring freeze, wage freezes, and RTO. This will cause those who are retirement eligible to depart and they won't be backfilled.

According to this report from the WH in 2022, 30% of Feds are retirement eligible "within the next 5 years"....so by 2027.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ap_7_strengthening_fy2023.pdf

They won't even need to do a VERA or VSIP.

What qualifies someone as retirement eligible?

They’ve reached MRA.

What is MRA?

Minimum retirement age, which depends on when you were born. However, you also need a certain number of years in govt, and there is a penalty if you draw benefits before 62.

The Fed workforce leans older because government mostly hires people with advanced degrees and prior work experience. There are relatively few hiring opportunities for new grads with no work experience (so that the government doesn't have to pay to train you) and most jobs that don't require degrees have been outsourced to contractors. So there is always a large share that is about to become retirement eligible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actual RIFs seem very unlikely to me. Of course no one knows but if they have any brains at all they’ll just rely on attrition.

This. There will be a hiring freeze, wage freezes, and RTO. This will cause those who are retirement eligible to depart and they won't be backfilled.

According to this report from the WH in 2022, 30% of Feds are retirement eligible "within the next 5 years"....so by 2027.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ap_7_strengthening_fy2023.pdf

They won't even need to do a VERA or VSIP.

What qualifies someone as retirement eligible?

They’ve reached MRA.

What is MRA?

Minimum retirement age, which depends on when you were born. However, you also need a certain number of years in govt, and there is a penalty if you draw benefits before 62.

The Fed workforce leans older because government mostly hires people with advanced degrees and prior work experience. There are relatively few hiring opportunities for new grads with no work experience (so that the government doesn't have to pay to train you) and most jobs that don't require degrees have been outsourced to contractors. So there is always a large share that is about to become retirement eligible.

Thanks for that explanation.

[Anonymous]

I would buy tickets because having a plan to attend the wedding and see family would give you something to look forward to. We are putting off discretionary vacations (dual Fed family) but being somewhere for a special event seems important.

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the real world, fed. People in the private sector could be rif’d at any moment and have to prepare for this. No sympathy for Feds who have been coasting for years and now are scared it’s all going to catch up with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Welcome to the real world, fed. People in the private sector could be rif’d at any moment and have to prepare for this. No sympathy for Feds who have been coasting for years and now are scared it’s all going to catch up with them.

That’s why you get higher salaries for the same job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this proves is that the federal workforce is overloaded with Democrats who are paranoid and should be purged not for political affiliation but for irrationality.

Or the fact that you can take a “long vacation” and your work just sits there and waits for you? The government is so bloated. Many people need to be fired. My dad had a guy who literally didn’t show up for a year and wasn’t fired. All those slickers need to go.

People are so bizarre. The OP is talking about taking a week off next summer…Yeesh

I’m a fed - people in my office work really hard for a lot less money than they could make in the private sector. We do work less than we would in private but we make like a 1/3 or even less of private sector salaries and people are still working plenty of evening, weekends, checking email on vacations and even pulling all nighters in some cases. The quality of the work is also quite high. It is not easy to get a job in my office and people have been let go when they aren’t working out during their probationary period.

I am sure there are lazy feds and I’ve come across a few duds in other offices I deal with who are some combination of lazy and dim BUT that’s a very small percentage. I deal with a lot of people and most are very good and extremely hardworking professional positions that require graduate and advanced degrees

Some of the lower level admin and HR functions I would say it’s a different story.

If you haven’t worked in govt you don’t realize how complex things are and how fulfilling any given function involves a lot of behind the scenes work to make happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your employer is restructuring and many times that comes with RIFs. Literally every person who doesn’t work for the federal government has likely experienced this, it’s frankly astonishing how frail our government employees are at just the *thought* of being impacted at their job.

It shouldn't be astonishing. On the whole, government employees are risk averse. We took lower wages, a fixed salary table, and a pension in exchange for more money, more perks, and the possibility of being laid off with absolutely no notice for no reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this is very very low on the list of concerns for federal employees now. But, a close relative is getting married internationally next summer(where my family is from). I had always planned on going but haven't put in leave, bought tickets, etc. Now I feel stressed about 1)spending the money and 2)being out of contact for a week+ and then coming back to a RIF or something. I'm probably overthinking this? What are other feds at vulnerable agencies doing about their future time off?

There are no vacations in 2025 wake up are you stupid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Drain the Swamp!

People really need to stop saying this. It’s idiotic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this proves is that the federal workforce is overloaded with Democrats who are paranoid and should be purged not for political affiliation but for irrationality.

Or the fact that you can take a “long vacation” and your work just sits there and waits for you? The government is so bloated. Many people need to be fired. My dad had a guy who literally didn’t show up for a year and wasn’t fired. All those slickers need to go.

You can’t take a vacation at your job?

[Anonymous]

Any fed who has worked with a contractor knows that the old saw that the private sector has higher quality workers is nonsense. Sure, there are some good federal contractors, but so many do shoddy work or plagiarize government publications. The problem is that quality measures just aren't written into contracts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your employer is restructuring and many times that comes with RIFs. Literally every person who doesn’t work for the federal government has likely experienced this, it’s frankly astonishing how frail our government employees are at just the *thought* of being impacted at their job.

Well, feds did exchange the option of higher pay for stability plus lower pay.

I would go ahead And plan for the trip but maybe see if you could get trip insurance in case you have to cancel.

That exchange is for fields that actually would get paid more. An English degree definitely gets paid better at the Fed.

[Anonymous]

Go on vacation. RIFs don’t work that way, even if they actually come about on that timeframe (which they won’t). First they have to determine that a job category is not needed or overstaffed. Usually they do an early out for those eligible to retire. If that doesn’t work and they go to a RIF (which hasn’t happened in decades) it’s last in, first out in that category. RIFs have nothing to do with competency or cause.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Welcome to the real world, fed. People in the private sector could be rif’d at any moment and have to prepare for this. No sympathy for Feds who have been coasting for years and now are scared it’s all going to catch up with them.

You’re making a false parallel. No CEO looks at his company and says they’ll take a hatchet to it to save money. They carefully examine how to cut costs without collapsing the company. Because they want the company to succeed. Feds would understand careful cost cutting. But Trump, Elon and Vivek are promising a hatchet, not careful cost cutting. They’re doing it for spite. They don’t love their “company”, the government, and are doing it largely for spite, to hurt government workers, and wrapping it up as saving taxpayers money. It’s true that it will save taxpayers money, but it’s also true that the hatchet approach will severely hurt the government. That’s not what a CEO would do for their company.