Career Plateauing in the Public Service: Baby Boom and Employment Bust

Abstract

watchful. In certain situations, they will be better off leaving, both to protect their reputations (which suffer from association) and to achieve more useful and meaningful career opportunities. While hunkering down has become a common survival principle in government, there are times when such a strategy is inappropriate and potentially damaging to one's career and ego. For others, a reasonable future for career civil servants exists, despite the current storm clouds. It is brighter in some agencies than in others. In the final analysis, it is up to individual career employees to assess their agency's prospects for survival and future utility. Finally, improvement in program performance will require considerable attention to the development of a career professional staff. Such an activity is not an especially glamorous subject for political leaders, will certainly not make such leaders famous, and would probably not even draw accolades from the public. Yet, no substantial improvement in government performance is possible without attention to such issues over a reasonably long period of time. As our political leadership confronts the numerous problems facing the nation in the 1980s, the role of the professional civil servant must be examined. If expertise and high program performance is desired, supportive environments must be fostered and nurtured. Otherwise, the federal government is less likely to retain or attract the nation's most capable individuals. Many agencies offer a model for such environments. In those agencies, there is a reason for career employees to make a substantial career commitment to those institutions and for those institutions to make a substantial investment in individuals. Our political leadership would do well to use these institutions as a model for what government can be at its best.