Retirement: A Gradual Wave?

Time for me to eat a little crow. In my item yesterday on the possibility of a mass retirement exodus in the federal workforce in the coming years, I speculated that figures used by the Partnership for Public Service relied on combining those eligible for regular retirement with those who potentially could retire early. John Palguta, vice president for policy and research at the Partnership, has set me straight: the numbers they used do not include those eligible for early retirement.

Palguta makes a series of other salient points about the retirement issue that are worth noting. Among them:

• "While not all retirement eligible employees leave upon first eligibility, they do eventually leave one way or another. ... For each of the last five years, the number of full-time, permanent employees who retired was greater than the year before, e.g., 54,285 retired in FY 2004 compared to only 43,661 in FY 2000. While this might not qualify as a tsunami, it is a very significant--even if gradualâ€"increase in the drain of talent from government.
• "This talent bleed need not be a problem if an organization has been engaged in good succession planning and has been proactive in ensuring that talented employees are already on-board and prepared to step up and take over for those who are leaving, particularly at the supervisory and management levels. Unfortunately, the evidence is that good succession planning and associated talent acquisition and development is the exception rather than the rule.
• "The question isn’t whether there will be at least marginally qualified people outside of the federal government willing to take a federal job (there always will be) but rather a) can the federal government bring in the very best talent available for the jobs to be done, and b) can it provide the type of work environment and leadership necessary to retain and motivate that talent once it’s on board?"

I agree wholeheartedly with the part about this being a significant but gradual increase in retirements that ought to be taken seriously. But I'm betting the increase will remain gradual. Not only do "not all" retirement eligible employees leave when they're first eligible, many wait years before doing so. And I honestly fear that continuing to say a "tsunami" is about to hit could create a Chicken Little effect: People will think there's no problem at all if there's not a huge shift in a short time frame.