Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Now is just not a good time to be looking with the sequester. Agencies are not filling vacant positions. We lost over 30 people in my section of Justice over the past three years. We hired 5.
This is so depressing.
Same at my agency on a much smaller scale. We lost 3 from an office of 12 over the past 3 years, including the deputy. Haven't filled any of them and don't plan to. That is in addition to the 2 spots that we never filled from about 10 years back; I think those are probably officially gone now. The thing is, though, we don't really need those spots, so it isn't that bad. The old-timers moan about how overworked we are but I don't see it. The rest of the agency has much more work than my small office and so they are getting the funding for the spots -- as they should. I think it is much worse at larger places like Justice or HHS or HUD that are just swamped all the time. I hate to give credence to the government/fed haters, but we really do have some dead weight at my agency that would be good to trim. And the only way to do it is through retirement and attrition because their work is adequate, just not great.
In any event, OP, if you are seeing advertisements, you might as well apply. Can't hurt to try. My guess is that the vacancy announcements are way down from where they were a year ago but maybe they will pick up in a few months after the budget issues are worked out.