ABSTRACT
The recruiting and retaining quality employees serves as the bedrock of American governance, some have observed that research on the quality issue has been sporadic and, in some cases, lacking in scientific rigor. This chapter explains the dearth of information by using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to evaluate the quality of exits from the civil service. The data used to compare the quality of those who stay with and those who leave their positions in the public sector are provided by the NLSY. The NLSY is sponsored by the US Department of Labor under authority of the Job Training Partnership Act to collect detailed information relating to the employment history of young adults. NLSY data for exits from public sector employment were pooled for the years 1981 through 1992. Public employees who exited public employment from temporary work or the end of a special program were excluded from this analysis.
