Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The key to hiring millennials in the federal government is proper agency funding, adequate pay raises and an efficient hiring process, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) told Congress.

Shortchanged agencies are struggling with hiring freezes even while the existing workforce is burdened with too much work. Increasing agency budgets can ease the workload issues and allow agencies to make full use of the tools already at their disposal: existing pay and personnel authorities.

“It is simply a myth that current statute and the General Schedule prevent agencies from responding to a changing recruitment and retention environment,” NTEU National President Tony Reardon wrote in testimony submitted to a hearing on attracting millennials to federal careers. “Current law provides agencies with pay-setting flexibilities that are designed to respond to an agency’s need for specialized talent and highly-technical skills, and to situations where staffing shortages develop due to an inability to recruit or retain workers.”

Lack of funding also has led many federal agencies to forgo student loan repayments which interests recent graduates, as does paid parental leave—a common benefit in the private sector. NTEU supports legislation providing federal employees with paid parental leave.

Federal wages are not keeping up with private-sector salaries which also discourages young job seekers from considering the government as an employer. Department of Labor data show that private-sector wages have increased 10.6 percent over the past six years while federal wages have increased by only 3.3 percent in the same time frame.

“A faster hiring process would greatly assist in successfully seeing millennials join the federal workforce,” Reardon said. Instead the federal government has an outdated, non-applicant centered, and non-sequenced hiring process that is in need of streamlining.

Reardon cautioned lawmakers against abandoning well-established merit principles in a misguided effort to make changes to current civil service law.

“The need to hire the next generation of federal employees does not require abandoning key principles, but rather argues for them to be preserved,” Reardon said in his testimony. 

Thursday’s hearing was held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management subcommittee.

NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.