State Government Jobs Research Articles

Progress Toward Increasing Women’s and Minorities’ Access to Top State Government Jobs?

This study examines the impact of qualifications and hiring advantages on women’s and minorities’ access to state government jobs, both in managerial and high-salary positions and overall. It also looks at how race and gender differences in representation have changed since 1990 and how they compare with the private sector. All groups, except Latino and Asian men, are more likely than White men to work for state governments, and all groups are more likely to do so than comparable White men. White men remain more likely to be managers and to earn top-decile salaries than comparable White women and people of color. Differences in education, experience, veteran status, and citizenship contribute, in different ways, to each group’s underrepresentation at top levels, but sizable unexplained gaps remain. The good news is that access to top jobs is better in state governments than in the private sector and has improved since 1990.

Factors Influencing Job Choice among Agricultural Graduates in Tamil Nadu

The results revealed that 96 per cent of the doctoral degree students selected the course by choice, which was 97.5 and 74 per cent in case of master and bachelor degree students, respectively. Majority of the students opted bachelor degree course to learn practical agriculture, while post-graduation has been opted for attaining a better job. The percentage of students who selected agricultural studies by their own decisions have increased with increase in the degree level, which was 36, 57, and 62 per cent at bachelor, master and doctoral degree levels, respectively. Apart from their own decisions, their fathers and siblings served as a source of motivation for a significant number of students at all the degree levels. Majority of the students, as well as their parents, wished to get employed in the service sector, and a considerable proportion of them wanted to go for higher education. Within the service sector, state government jobs were mostly preferred and private sector jobs were least preferred. Interestingly, a significant volume (26%) of the bachelor degree students wanted to take up farming as their profession. There was a significant positive relationship between career preferences and profile characteristics like family income, degree level and medium of instruction at the secondary level. Student respondents felt that family type, family background and income were the major constraints in selecting their career options.

The Impact of Veterans' Preference on the Composition and Quality of the Federal Civil Service

The Impact of Veterans' Preference on the Composition and Quality of the Federal Civil Service

Comment on “Academic specialties in U.S. are shifting: Hiring of women geoscientists is stagnating”

The analysis of hiring trends of women by Holmes et al. (Eos, 28 October 2003, p. 457) is a useful contribution to our understanding of employment practices in the geosciences. While their findings indicate that “state geological surveys hired the lowest proportion of women with Ph.D.s in the geosciences; only 8% of hires in the last 10 years were female,” some explanation for this observation is necessary lest state surveys be seen as less than anxious to hire women. Two‐thirds of state geological surveys are within state agencies (the balance are affiliated with academia),and state government jobs are notoriously lower‐paying. State surveys are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit qualified female geoscientists at all levels because of salary competition from academia and industry. Additionally and since employees tend to remain with state surveys once employed, the prospects for job openings and career advancement are limited for either gender.

Male‐Female Supply to State Government Jobs and Comparable Worth

The proportion of women in state government jobs and applicant pools is well explained by a model emphasizing supply‐side factors. Relative to men, women's supply is least sensitive to wages in predominantly male jobs and most sensitive to wages in predominantly female jobs. These results suggest that comparable worth policies that shift relative pay toward traditionally female jobs and away from traditionally male jobs will increase the proportion of females in male‐dominated, female‐dominated, and total state government jobs. The implication is that supply side responses need not prevent comparable worth pay adjustments from raising total female compensation.

Comparable Worth and Factor Point Pay Analysis in State Government

This study examines how factor point systems have treated state government jobs, which are held disproportionately by women, minorities, and union members. The findings indicate that female jobs may gain from comparable worth pay proposals, but the gains are dissipated in actual pay; unionized and minority workers tend to lose both proposed and actual pay; and the dispersion of points and pay is narrowed for jobs covered by collective bargaining agreements

CONVERGENCE AMONG DATA SOURCES, RESPONSE BIAS, AND RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF A STRUCTURED JOB ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE

Research examined both the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ) and the possible analyst sources for gathering job analysis information. 25 state government jobs were examined using job incumbents, supervisors, job analysts, and a comparison group of college students. Reliability and validity (judge convergence and prediction of present pay levels) information was determined for each of the four analyst categories. Results indicate that there is little difference between analyst sources, including students, in terms of their ability to reliably analyze a job using the PAQ. Convergent validity results showed a high degree of agreement among all judge categories when summing item frequencies across all 25 jobs. The prediction of present pay levels was significant for all judge categories but was noticeably smaller than previously reported studies. This seemed to be primarily due to the restriction in salary range of the present study. An analysis of judge response bias showed that supervisors and incumbents rate all or most PAQ items higher than their analyst counterparts. These findings suggest that who furnishes responses to a job analysis inventory makes little practical difference. The exception is that the determination of pay levels and human requirements for test construction purposes should be viewed with caution when different analyst sources are utilized for different jobs.