Commentary

Not much of a threat to federal workers

Unions often worry that competitive sourcing will mean lots of federal employees losing their jobs. The truth is typically much less dramatic. Few jobs are actually cut, and when work is outsourced federal employees are usually shuffled off to other government jobs or they opt for early retirement. Now another report finds the same: The report, by the University of Maryland’s Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise, is the widest-ranging study on the impact of competitive sourcing initiatives on federal employees to date. It exmained almost 1,200 competitions between the private sector and federal employees at the Defense Department during the past 10 years. The study found that only 5 percent of the 65,151 civilian employees whose work was put up for competition lost their jobs as a result. For more see this Reason study.