About 60% of federal employees hired in recent years left their jobs within two years, according to a new report that focused on hiring and retention of individuals with disabilities.
The disabled population within federal government followed a similar path between fiscal years 2011 and 2017, the Government Accountability Office found, with roughly 60% also leaving within two years. This means while agencies have improved their hiring rates of disabled individuals, they have failed to ensure those employees stick around.
President Obama issued an executive order in 2010 that set a goal of hiring 100,000 people from the larger disabled community within five years, a target the federal government reached in 2016. All told, federal agencies hired 223,000 disabled individuals between 2011 and 2017. Democratic lawmakers last year raised concerns with the Trump administration, however, citing statistics that federal agencies were not hiring enough disabled Americans and were firing their disabled employees at a disproportionate rate.
The rate of disabled hiring has increased steadily since Obama’s order, and in fiscal 2017 reached nearly 20% of all hires. Of the 223,000 disabled employees, however, nearly 40% stayed in government for less than one year. Another 19% left within two years.
The high rate of early departures for both disabled and non-disabled employees, GAO said, could be reflected in part by the nature of the jobs for which they were hired.
“These departures may be explained, in part, by the proportion of employees hired into temporary positions who therefore were not necessarily expected to stay on the job for a longer duration,” the auditors said, adding poor performance could also be a factor.
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