It's a truism that nobody ever gets fired from a government job. But is it actually true? I was curious.
The BLS tracks job separations for both private industry and the federal government, but unfortunately they don't break layoffs and discharges apart. This makes comparison difficult since the federal government doesn't really have layoffs.
But there are estimates of layoffs in the private sector, and if you subtract those from the BLS numbers you get a rough estimate of the number of people fired. Here it is:
(Note that I've eliminated the 2010 and 2020 numbers for the federal government because they include huge spikes for census workers let go after the counting fieldwork is done.)
So the answer is that the truism appears to be true. Private companies fire about 1% of their employees every year while the federal government lets go only about 0.3%. That's a big difference, though I'll bet you're surprised at how low the private sector number is. Very few people ever get outright fired even in famously at-will America.
Private companies fire about 1% of their employees every year
also, the federal gov't isn't going out of business while private companies go out of business all the time
so comparing private vs public firings isn't just about gov't retaining under-performing employees (even though the wsj would love to imply that's the case)
I had a niece get fired from a state gubmint job. Well I guess she was let go at the end of her probationary period. Is that getting fired? None of us were surprised. She's never held a full time day job, and she may have deliberately sabotaged her chances.
My boss in state government was able to fire 2 people for incompetence. Both were breathtakingly incompetent and the inability to fire them would have been demoralizing. But it was really difficult, particularly because both would be able to allege discrimination (one disability, one minority). The amount of documentation necessary was quite daunting and I thought being able to fire them would be too great a task. My boss weathered the accusations of discrimination and was able to succeed in having them discharged. But I could see why others would not bother.
I have regularly worked with federal employees for 35 years. I have never seen one fired for incompetence, no matter how much they deserved it. They only get fired for insubordination.
violating the terms of your clearance will get you walked to the door pretty quickly
Did you ask the SCOTUS about that? At least one job can violate at will.
Federal employees also get fired for sexual harassment.
"But there are estimates of layoffs in the private sector, and if you subtract those from the BLS numbers you get a rough estimate of the number of people fired... Very few people ever get outright fired even in famously at-will America."
Many large companies have periodic layoffs, even while continuing hiring. People laid off in these circumstances are often (certainly not always) targeted for elimination, without going through the procedures to demonstrate cause for dismissal.
What's the civilian rate, including layoffs?
Exactly they fire people all the time but they do it in bulk and give them a small severance so they don't have to deal with lawsuits. This is one of those cases where looking at statistics gives you zero insight into how it really works.
Much of my career was as a manager in USDA. Never "fired" an employee as Trump used to do on TV, I understand.I did start the process of documenting deficiencies, etc. etc. which would leat to dismissal, but the employees left before the final stage. I don't know how those instances would show up in statistics if someone makes a lateral move or leaves government entirely.It's definitely an unpleasant and time-consuming process, but one I'd prefer to that proposed by Project 2025 and/or Trump's Schedule F.
Yeah, if they know the reason sucks, they label it a 'layoff' or assign an unworkable workload.
My spouse was laid off last year and they did three things: Prepared a for-cause reason (that her Python in the non-production environment wasn't to perfect standards, she was hired as a C++ programmer), gave her an impossible task (which should have required an entire team or third-party company; which was out of her expertise, yet she did it anyhow), and then gave her a buy-out at the same time declaring it was a layoff.
They targeted all the senior engineers the same way: Gave them an impossible task, said there was something outside their expertise they weren't perfect at, and then laid them off with a big payout.
I had another friend who was assigned to be separate from everyone doing the same job, assigned him 5x as many projects to complete, and continued marking him as unsatisfactory until he quit, losing his pension.
They had to hire three people to replace him, all at a higher wage.
That wouldn't be counted as firing. But his was a government job.
Back in the mid-70s my first job out of college was as a programmer at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation in MA). I was handed responsibility for debugging the V1 CODASYL database - which was very finicky and buggy, and later picked up the (aalso very buggy) transaction processing monitor that handled the (multiple) data entry terminals used to enter and maintain the data in the database.
We got new (and incompetent) management in and I decided to go job hunting and went over to the Manufacturing IT group and my assistant also headed to another group. A year later I visited the old office. We had been replaced by over a dozen people!
Most workers in either the public or private sectors know when the writing is on the wall: if your boss starts documenting your deficiencies, or hands you a Performance Improvement Plan, it's time to get your resume together.
Actual firings are probably getting rarer everywhere because bosses have more ways to let people know they should go.
"Very few people ever get outright fired even in famously at-will America."
My guess is they have ways to make you quit instead so they don't have to pay unemployment.
Partly it's that, but also because firing someone outright is rude and risky and people are instinctively averse to that kind of confrontation.
Firms do not pay unemployment. A state-run fund does. So it really doesn't matter to firms whether their ex-workers collect unemployment not. Often enough they simply sign off on it because it makes workers less likely to sue them for wrongful dismissal. Some even give severance pay on the condition of signing an agreement not to sue
I worked at the Small Business Administration during the pandemic, and a member of my team got fired at one point. Partly it was for poor productivity, partly it was for not telling our boss in advance that he was moving (we were working remotely and, for security reasons, supposed to work from one location only.)
Traditionally, people with college degrees have a choice: work for the government and get lower pay in return for higher job security, or work for a private company and get higher pay and lower job security. It's a good system and we should keep it.
My late mother was a career personnel type in the Federal government. From what I heard via her, admittedly not a lot of anecdata, it took a great deal of effort to fire someone. Had to be pretty egregious conduct on the part of the employee.
Family member worked in state government human resources. She certainly fired people. Her take was that managers typically didn't want to do the work of documentation necessary for dismissal with cause.
I wonder how many firings in the private sector are in low-paying food and retail jobs. The kinds of low-skill jobs teenagers and people who can't work elsewhere get and then lose. I'd bet those have higher rates of firing. Government doesn't have many of those types of jobs.
There's also a lot of "I quit!" going on in low wage jobs since the wages are not high enough to really hold people and benefits are usually non-existent.
As a general rule only people who commit serious offenses are "fired". Firms generally wait until they have a reason for "downsizing" to get rid of people whose performance is disappointing but not disastrous or legally problematic. That way it's much less likely to result in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.