Demographic Perspectives

The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings offer valuable insights into employee views of the federal workplace and while government-wide and agency perspectives offer important information, it doesn’t tell the entire story. It is important to examine the perspectives of employees across several demographic groups, to see if there are groups of employees who may be experiencing the workplace differently.

Previous iterations of the Best Places to Work rankings identified gaps in employee job satisfaction along gender and age lines, and 2012 was no different.

Government-wide, men were marginally more satisfied with their jobs than women, with a score of 64.3, compared to women with a score of 63.9 out of 100. Scores for men decreased by 2.1 points compared to 2011, while scores for women decreased by 3.2 points.

Federal workers under the age of 40 had a 2012 Best Places to Work score of 63.4, a decrease of 4.4 points compared to 2011. The score for federal workers over 40 was 64.6, a decline of 1.9 points from 2011. The decline in both age groups coincides with a decrease in the overall government-wide score that measures federal employee job satisfaction and commitment.

Among racial and national origin groups, there was a 12 point gap between the high and low scoring racial and ethnic groups.

Employees who classify themselves as Asian were most satisfied with a score of 68.8, which is eight points above the government-wide score of 60.8. They were followed by black employees (64.9), Hispanic or Latino (64.4), white (64.4), Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders (62.9), American Indian (58.3) and multi-racial (56.9). On average, scores for each group dropped by about 3 points compared to 2011.

New to the rankings this year is demographic information on military service and on disability status of federal employees.

The data showed non veterans (64.7) were slightly more satisfied than veterans (63.1).

Among all of the federal employees surveyed, those with a disability registered a job satisfaction score of 58.0, while those who do not have a disability had a score of 65.2.

The data also showed that members of the Senior Executive Service (SES), the federal leadership corps, had a job satisfaction score of 82.6, far higher that the government-wide score of 60.8.