Federal Government's Hispanic Population Stays Virtually Stagnant at 8.4 Percent

The Hispanic population ticked up very slightly as a percentage of the total federal workforce in fiscal 2014, according to a new report, but it still lags far behind the Hispanic makeup of the U.S. population.

About 8.4 percent of federal employees were Hispanic as of fiscal 2014, up from 8.3 percent the previous year. The Office of Personnel Management placed a “special emphasis” on recruiting, hiring and retaining Hispanics as part of its REDI initiative last year.

Hispanics made up 7.5 percent of new hires in fiscal 2014, according to the report, up from 7 percent in the previous year. They made up 4.4 percent of the Senior Executive Service and 5.5 percent of SES new hires, a 2 percentage point increase over fiscal 2013.

The most common federal position for Hispanics last year was auditing; a whopping 62 percent of all auditors hired by federal agencies in 2014 were Hispanic. Other common professions included electrical engineers, medical technologists, accountants and social workers.

The Homeland Security Department again employed the largest Hispanic workforce, with the group making up 21 percent of DHS employees. The Defense Department, not including military branches, saw the biggest uptick in Hispanic employees of any large agency, jumping half a percentage point to 5.9 percent of its workforce. The Pentagon nearly doubled its rate of Hispanic hires in fiscal 2014, to nearly 11 percent of new employees.

The Social Security Administration made a large increase in Hispanic hiring; in fiscal 2013, the agency hired just five total Hispanic employees, while last year it hired 158 times that number, or 790 employees.  

OPM said it will “continue to monitor” the rate of Hispanics leaving federal service, with 8.5 percent of all feds resigning being Hispanic in fiscal 2014, an uptick from the previous year. The human resources agency has tracked Hispanics in the federal workforce since President Bill Clinton issued an executive order requiring the study in 2000. In that year, 6.5 percent of federal employees were Hispanic.

While the percentage of Hispanics in federal government has grown since then, that growth has not kept pace with the increase in Hispanics living in the United States; the group makes up roughly 17 percent of the U.S. population. 

(Image via Photoraidz / Shutterstock.com)