Who wants to work for the government?(Statistical Data Included)

Will governments be able to attract the workers they need in the early twenty-first century? For the past two decades, observers have warned of a "quiet crisis" of steadily deteriorating "quality, morale, and effectiveness of the federal civil service" (Levine 1986, 200), "ubiquitous anomie" throughout the federal service (Wildavsky 1988,753), and "serious morale problems [as] a tragic and endemic hallmark of the federal service" (National Commission on the Public Service 1989, 91, ix). Despite apparent morale problems, there is little systematic evidence of either declining quality or rising turnover in the public service (Crewson 1995; Lewis 1991), but that may be partly because governments have had only a limited need to hire replacement workers, due to downsizing and pension plans that tie baby boomers to their federal jobs (Ippolito 1987). As the huge wave of baby boomer retirements swells, governments may face increasing difficulty finding enough of the workers they want--especially young college graduates of diverse races with the kinds of motivation and skills that governments desire (Light 1999,128-29).

This impending wave of hiring increases the need to investigate what kinds of people are attracted to government jobs and what characteristics make those jobs appealing. In this article, we analyze the 1989 and 1998 General Social Survey (GSS) to examine how people's demographic characteristics and the importance they place on various job attributes affect both whether they currently work for government and whether they prefer to work for private business or government. Most previous studies of public-private differences compare the attitudes of current public- and private-sector employees (typically with nonrandom samples), but becoming a public-sector employee involves both choice and chance. Matching an applicant with a job requires the government's willingness to offer a job and the individual's willingness to accept it. Comparing people who prefer to work for government or for the private sector may offer new insights into sectoral differences.

In the first section, we develop a model of choice between public- and private-sector jobs, reviewing arguments about what types of people should be attracted to government careers. After describing the GSS data, we then test those hypotheses using cross-tabulations and logistic regression. In particular, we look at the impact of demographic factors (race, sex, veteran status, age, and education) and the impact of the importance respondents place on high income, job security, and opportunities for public service. We then discuss possible implications of our findings.

A Model of Sectoral Choice

Kilpatrick, Cummings, and Jennings (1964, 23-24) find that job seekers typically rate financial rewards; job security; worthwhile, useful, interesting, and challenging work; opportunities for advancement; and good working conditions as the most important considerations in choosing a job. In searching the job market for these qualities, "people usually perceive occupations and employing organizations, not precisely and realistically, but in terms of vaguely generalized cultural pre-judgments" (Kilpatrick, Cummings, and Jennings 1964,7). Therefore, individual preferences for government or business jobs reflect not only their own job priorities, but their perceptions of which sector will better satisfy their needs. The relationship between the importance people place on various job attributes and their preference for public- or private-sector jobs should indicate which priorities lead to a predisposition to public employment and what stereotypes Americans have about jobs in the two sectors.

Pay

Although economists typically assume that pay is the key factor in workers' job choices, many public administration scholars argue that money matters less, and nonpecuniary benefits matter more, to public- than to private-sector employees (Crewson 1997; Karl and Sutton 1998; Kilpatrick, Cummings, and Jennings 1964; Perry and Porter 1982; Rainey 1982; Wittmer 1991). Implicit in the public administration literature is the belief that government pays less than the private sector, a view shared by federal employees (1) but largely rejected by the general public. (2) Although U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys indicate that federal pay is over 25 percent lower than private-sector pay for similar jobs, economists typically find that similar workers (those of the same race and sex with the same levels of education and experience) earn much more in the federal than in the private sector, though evidence on state and local government pay is mixed (see Langbein and Lewis 1998 for a review of the research). Thus, both economists and public administration scholars expect those who place the highest priority on pay to be driven toward the higher-paying sector, but they probably disagree as to which sector that is.