By Danny Vinik | POLITICO
It’s no secret that American workers are getting older. Even as millennials become the biggest cohort in the labor force, the median age of all U.S. employees has crept up from 30 to 42 over the past 30 years. But when it comes to getting older, a POLITICO analysis finds, the private sector has nothing on the U.S. government.
The U.S. just elected the oldest new president in history, and Congress, too, has been getting consistently older, with its average age now up around 60.
But the vast majority of the government consists of the 2 million-strong federal civilian workforce. And thanks to slow-moving hiring practices and a huge cohort of baby boomers who haven’t retired at the predicted rates, it has grown significantly older than the American workforce overall. Today, just 17 percent of federal workers are under 35 years old. (In the private sector, almost 40 percent are.) And more than a quarter of federal employees are now older than 55.
