Federal Job Research Articles

Priority Competencies for Designated Education Officers in the Veterans Health Administration.

Designated Education Officers (DEOs) at Veteran Health Administration (VHA) hospitals are senior educational leaders tasked with oversight of all clinical training at a particular facility. They prioritize dozens of tasks and responsibilities each day, from educational policy and strategy to staff management, financial planning, onboarding of trainees, and facility planning and management. Clarifying priority competencies for the role can help executives recruit, appoint, and evaluate capable personnel and promote effective, efficient performance. Using a federally developed method of competency analysis, researchers consulted a panel of subject-matter experts to identify priority competencies for DEOs, using data from a 2013 study that operationalizes competencies for more than 200 federal jobs. The research identified 25 primary competencies within 6 leadership domains. Five of the primary competencies cut across all leadership domains. Veteran Health Administration subject-matter experts in educational leadership say the identified competencies are urgently needed, critical for effective leadership, and valuable for distinguishing superior DEO performance. The competencies are relevant to VHA and perhaps other senior academic leaders who develop health professions education programs, oversee clinical training, and manage educational change. In military training facilities, attending to these competencies can help Designated Institutional Officials responsible for graduate medical education become more credible partners to other hospital leaders and contribute to becoming a high reliability organization. Executives identifying, recruiting, and appointing VHA DEOs and Designated Institutional Officials at military training facilities should consider these competencies when assessing candidates.

Indian Preference and the status of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the federal service: Employment, earnings, authority, and perceptions of fairness

AbstractPublic administration scholars have largely ignored American Indians and Alaska Natives in their studies of racial disparities in the federal service, despite strong reasons to believe they face discrimination. Using three large federal data sets (the American Community Survey, federal personnel records, and the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey), we compare the status of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the federal service to both Whites and other minorities. We find that, largely due to Indian Preference, American Indians and Alaska Natives are much more likely than Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians to hold federal jobs, but they are highly concentrated in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, agencies with which they have a sordid and fraught history. This concentration allows them to work in positions that may advance the interests of their communities and increases their probabilities of being supervisors, but it does not prevent them from being among the poorest‐paid and least‐satisfied employees in the federal service.

The Impact of Federal Job Guarantee Programs: Benefits and Disadvantages

The concept of a Federal Job Guarantee (FJG) program has garnered considerable attention in economic and political circles. The FJG entails the government providing employment opportunities to all eligible citizens, aiming to ensure full employment and alleviate poverty. This paper examines the potential benefits and disadvantages of implementing such a program on the national economy, labor market, and society. Through a comprehensive analysis of theoretical frameworks, empirical evidence, and real-world case studies, this paper sheds light on the potential implications of the Federal Job Guarantee.

The Impact of Federal Job Guarantee Programs: Benefits and Disadvantages

The Impact of Federal Job Guarantee Programs: Benefits and Disadvantages

Fostering Internal Pay Equity Through Gender Neutral Job Evaluations: A Case Study of the Federal Job Evaluation System

The principle of pay equity implies that work determined to be equally demanding in terms of skills or qualifications, responsibilities, efforts, and working conditions should be valued and paid equally. However, prevailing gender-based stereotypes and prejudices about female-dominated jobs get in the way of achieving pay equity. Gender biases in compensable job (sub) factors could result in undervaluation and/or omission of relevant job (sub) factors associated with female-dominated jobs, and/or unbalanced/biased interpretation of job (sub) factors by associating them mostly with male-dominated jobs. Using a case study of the Federal job evaluation system for white-collar, non-supervisory Federal jobs the present article argues for a proactive and an intentional inclusion of gender-neutral (sub) factors in job evaluation systems in service of fostering internal pay equity within organizations.

American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future

American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future

How Transgender and Non-Binary People are Ignored in the Male-Only Military Draft Debate

The constitutionality of an all-male military draft is currently being litigated in National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System. Unfortunately, the effect this issue will have on transgender and non-binary people is largely being ignored. This essay considers how current Selective Service standards are not only psychologically harmful to transgender and non-binary people but also how they negatively affect their ability to receive college financial aid, federal jobs, and job training.

There and Back Again: A Commentary on Social Welfare Policy in the Wake of 2020

There and Back Again: A Commentary on Social Welfare Policy in the Wake of 2020

Federal Structure and Job Satisfaction of Employee: A Case Study of Arghakhanchi District, Nepal

The study proposes a descriptive as well as a causal relationship in order to analyze the interlink between changed federal structure and employee job satisfaction of Arghakhanchi district in Nepal. After this study, it was revealed that the government employees are highly dissatisfied with present organizational structure and want to amend the same. Thus, the paper concluded that the newly amend organizational structure has been expected to be amended for job satisfaction of government level employees for better performance in Nepal. At the most, the results of this study cannot be generalized for the large population. So, further study can be done by taking more sample size for the research and applying probability sampling methods.

From Stigma to Dignity? Transforming Workfare with Universal Basic Income and a Federal Job Guarantee

As the COVID-19 pandemic takes a catastrophic toll on lives and livelihoods across the United States, the harshest impact of the unpredictable virus has disproportionately fallen with foreseeable accuracy on Black, immigrant, poor, and elderly people, who are most likely to live and work in close contact with others and to have less access to health care or emergency savings. The speed and severity of the viral contagion has rendered devastatingly, undeniably visible the vast, racial gap between those with reliable health care, child care, housing, nutrition, household wealth, and income and those without, but that gap was already widening well before the pandemic amid accelerating economic inequality, racial disparity, and precarity for those fortunate enough to find paid work. By the summer of 2020, pandemic isolation gave way to mass protests supporting the Movement for Black Lives with calls to end anti-Black police brutality and mass incarceration, but also seeking to end exploitation of Black essential workers and increase attention to longstanding economic devastation of divestment from communities of color. With physical health and safety linked inextricably to material deprivation came heightened public demands for racial, social, and economic justice to help marginalized communities not just survive in times of crisis, but thrive every day. This Article examines reinvigorated proposals for universal basic income (UBI) and a federal job guarantee (JG) to reduce poverty, income inequality, and the widening racial wealth gap. It examines the potential of such reforms to put more money into the hands of those most likely to use it while ending involuntary unemployment and boosting labor conditions for all, but especially Blacks and people of color with less access to generational wealth, higher education, and protection against employment discrimination. It concludes that both UBI and JG are necessary but each insufficient on its own to achieve greater economic security and mobility, with dignified work for all. Crucially, a universal minimum income untethered to any form of work requirement is essential to break the racialized and gendered stigma that frames economic need as welfare dependency; equally important is the guarantee of public employment at a living wage to those who voluntarily choose to avoid gaps in earned income and employment history but have historically been excluded from the best work-life options. Together, UBI and JG form vital pillars of social support for withstanding future crises, large or small, and for creating the future society we want.

Leveraging social networks for offline crowdfunding in rural communities

Purpose<br/> As a result of the US JOBS Act, Regulation Crowdfnding went into effect in June of 2017, allowing non-accredited investors in the US for the first time to purchase securities in local start-ups. Ahead of the JOBS Act, Kansas established its own intrastate initiative in 2011, known as the Invest Kansas Exemption (IKE, 2011). The purpose of this paper is to explore how IKE participants describe the social and communal impact on their community crowdfunding success.<br/> Design/methodology/approach<br/> For this qualitative case study, we interviewed start-up businesses, economic champions, and SEC representatives in Kansas to determine the importance of social networks for entrepreneurs in offline community public offerings, what projects are fundable, and who to tap for capital and how to tap them.<br/> Findings<br/> Leaning heavily on social capital theory (Davidsson & Honig, 2003; Lin, Ensel, & Vaughn, 1981), we find that a successful community crowdfunding campaign requires community connections, economic champions, destination businesses, forward-thinkers, return to the community, and transparency.<br/> Limitations<br/> While the federal JOBS Act will present future opportunities for research, this study aimed to find social motivations behind participating in a regulation crowdfunding campaign, and is limited to participants in one US state.<br/> Implications<br/> The study provides insight into the social and communal aspect of crowdfunding investors, helping to expand further academic understanding of social capital as it pertains to business start-ups.<br/> Contribution<br/> This original study should be of broad interest to the social business academic community interested in understanding the social motivations of investing in a microlending campaign, as well as of practical relevance to entrepreneurs, and to community leaders who may seek those investors.

Racial Pay Parity in the Public Sector: The Overlooked Role of Employee Mobilization

Rising economic inequality has aggravated long-standing labor market disparities, with one exception: government employment. This article considers the puzzle of black-white wage parity in the American public sector. African Americans are more likely to work in the public than in the private sector, and their wages are higher there. The article builds on prior work emphasizing institutional factors conditioning this outcome to argue that employee mobilization can motor it. As public sector unions gained political influence postwar, their large constituencies of black, blue-collar workers, drawing on both militant and nonviolent tactics of the urbanizing civil rights movement, advocated for improved working conditions. Archival sources confirm this pattern at the federal level. The employment and activism of African Americans in low-skilled federal jobs pivoted union attention to blue-collar issues and directly contributed to the enactment of a transparent, universal wage schedule for the blue-collar federal workforce (the Federal Wage System). The result was greater pay parity for African Americans, as well as for other disadvantaged groups.

Approaching Modern Monetary Theory with a Taylor Rule

Considering the goals of Modern Monetary Theorists, this article examines inflation stabilization and employment maximization through a Taylor Rule for fiscal policy, similar to John Taylor’s foundational examination of the behavior of the Federal Reserve. If it is the role of the federal government to aid in the maintenance of the dual mandate of the Federal Reserve, then their behavior should follow a similar policy of setting an intermediate target of deficits relative to the maximum employment (the “Federal Job Guarantee”) and the inflation target. The paper will compare the historical data with the rule. When the predictions of the Deficit Rule are compared to historical data from 1965, we find that fiscal policy aligns with what the Deficit Rule predicts with two exceptions: the stagflation of the 1970s and the current increases in budget deficits.

Helping High School-Aged Military Dependents With Autism Gain Employment Through Project SEARCH + ASD Supports.

Youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face high rates of unemployment, with unique challenges for military-dependent and -connected youth with ASD. This paper reports preliminary findings from Year One of a randomized waitlist controlled trial investigating the efficacy of the Project SEARCH + ASD Supports (PS+ASD) intervention model for military-dependent and -connected youth with ASD. Treatment group participants (n=6) participated in internships at a military installation in the southeastern United States; waitlist group participants (n=8) received special education transition services at their local high schools. Employment outcome data were collected at 12months for both groups. Fourteen unique internship experiences were developed across seven business partner organizations on the military installation during Year One. Five of six PS+ASD treatment group participants obtained competitive integrated employment for an overall employment rate of 83.3%. Four of the positions were federal jobs. None of the waitlist group participants obtained competitive integrated employment during the same period. Initial results are promising and suggest that the PS+ASD model may help to meet the transition needs of military-dependent and -connected youth with ASD and the employment needs of local military communities.

The Federal Job Guarantee: Prevention, Not Just a Cure

This paper, argues the author, examines how the Job Guarantee proposal uniquely meets two major social requirements. It is a policy response whose merits include much more than its macroeconomic stabilization features, as discussed in the literature. It is also, in a sense, a method of inoculation against the vile effects of unemployment. The paper discusses several preventive features of the program.

Disrupting the Racial Wealth Gap

African-American families possess a dime for every dollar of White families’ wealth. Among policy ideas to remedy this stark racial wealth divide, baby bonds, basic income, reducing student loan debt, and federal job guarantees hold transformative potential.

Make a difference: ecology careers in federal agencies

Make a difference: ecology careers in federal agencies

The Federal Job Guarantee

The Federal Job Guarantee

Design Firm Challenges Exclusion from Federal Job Due to Conflict of Interest

Design Firm Challenges Exclusion from Federal Job Due to Conflict of Interest

A Path to Ending Poverty by Way of Ending Unemployment

Poverty in the United States, one of the world’s most wealthy and prosperous nations, is persistently high. Despite a complex array of social insurance programs in place, 43.1 million people remain in poverty. Because unemployment is a strong predictor of poverty, we propose a permanent federal job guarantee for all Americans. The program would provide full-time employment for any American over eighteen, offering at least nonpoverty wages plus benefits. Such a program will constitute a direct route to producing full employment by eradicating involuntary unemployment. It also will substantially increase worker bargaining power by removing the employer threat of unemployment. To make the case that the federal job guarantee is viable, this paper includes responses to five common criticisms lodged against programs of this type.