ABSTRACT
This chapter provides more detailed investigation of retention and exit patterns in the civil service over the past dozen years, using a one percent sample of federal personnel records for that period. It begins with prior research on federal pay and turnover, which shows that federal pay has probably fallen enough for us to reasonably expect increased turnover, but that previous government studies have not found federal turnover to have risen as the pay gap has widened. The focus then turns to determining whether quit rates have remained stable because federal workers really are no more dissatisfied and no more likely to quit than in the past. Despite declines in federal pay relative to the private sector, quit rates in federal white-collar employment have been remarkably stable over the past dozen years and remain as low as, or lower than, those in most private firms.
