Look Out! It's A Brain Drain!

Well, I hope the folks at the Office of Personnel Management and the Partnership for Public Service who have been issuing dire warnings about the impending "retirement tsunami" are happy. Because they got Time.com to bite on the story. And here's how its reporters chose to describe the situation:

"Over the next five years, over half of the federal government workforce is likely to retire, completely gutting vital agencies like the Centers for Disease Control, the Internal Revenue Service, and Veterans Affairs. The higher up the management chain, the worse the problem; among top government officials, almost 70% are primed to retire. A culture of denial has set in, and the very people responsible to fix it are the ones who are going to ditch. Many agencies will enter an embarrassing phase of ineptitude, caused by a lack of staff or a newly hired and inexperienced staff. Get ready to hate your government again."

Of course, the government has a challenge ahead as baby boomers exit the workforce, but this piece suffers from the same mistake that much of the reporting on this "crisis" does: assuming that everybody is going to retire all at once, and that all agencies will be affected equally. Among its other hysterical statements:

• "We will see the effects of this brain drain everywhere." (But the story falls back on weasel words when describing what actually might happen: The CDC "might" be short on biologists in a pandemic. Tax refunds "might" be late. Iraq veterans "may" get poor care at VA hospitals.)
• "Many of the 2,000 who were employed [at FEMA when Katrina hit] were clueless new hires."
• "Three million baby boomers will be applying for retirement benefits every year, but the [Social Security Administration] will have 40% less staff to process their claims."
• "The government will need to wake up to the modern age, using recruiters and newspaper advertising."
• Federal agencies "often pay your way through college or forgive your school loans."