America's government does not look like America: It's older than it's ever been, with the oldest new president in history and an aging Congress too. The vast federal workforce is graying as well, because of slow-moving hiring practices and boomers delaying retirement. Upshot: predictable drops in productivity and rising costs due to workers' seniority and declining health. You think retirements will solve the problem? No, it will only create new ones -- from rising pension costs to losses of institutional memory. We'll have government to kick around for a long time to come.
From Politico:
Can President Donald Trump turn around the federal behemoth? He's promised to run the government like a private-sector company and tasked his son-in-law, senior adviser Jared Kushner [above], with modernizing government through the newly created Office of American Innovation. But there are a lot of reasons for skepticism that an influx of younger workers will enter the government anytime soon. One of Trump's first moves was a hiring freeze, and though it has since been lifted, it sent an immediate bad signal to potential candidates considering government careers, experts said. More importantly, Trump is very unpopular with young people: One recent poll found that 62 percent of millennials disapprove of his job performance, compared to just 22 percent who approved. (He's more popular among older Americans—but not with federal employees, who overwhelmingly disapprove of his performance.) And if the economy continues to improve, workers will have other job options instead of working for Uncle Sam.
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