The retirement tsunami at Washington

Figures released earlier this month by the Office of Personnel Management seem to suggest that the giant wave of baby boomers leaving federal service may be starting to build.

For the first three months of 2012, OPM saw a steady increase in the number of new claims for the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) over what it had predicted for those months. In March, the most recent month reported, OPM received 7,090 requests, over 2,000 more than what it expected to receive.

These figures followed a year of steadily increasing retirement requests. In 2011, 104,810 retirement applications were filed by federal employees, according to OPM — a 24 percent increase over 2010 levels. Although December is typically the slowest month of the year for retirements, 7,041 requests were filed in December 2011 compared to 4,726 in 2010.

John Palguta, vice president for policy, Partnership for Public Service

“I don’t think it quite reaches tsunami stage, but I think that was partly an oversold prediction,” said John Palguta, vice president of the Partnership for Public Service. “We’re not being swamped with retirements in particular. But, we are seeing that wave of departures increasing and, indeed, in fiscal year 2011, we were at a 10-year high for voluntary retirements in the executive branch.”

Palguta said it was unclear which agencies were feeling the brunt of the growing retirements, but some could be more vulnerable than others.

“Some agencies, I think, metaphorically they’ve been standing on their toes with the water up to their chin and this wave can be tsunami-like for that particular organization and they’re stretched thin,” he said. “All of a sudden, they’re losing some key personnel. For other agencies that have been doing succession planning or happen to be in a better position in terms of their appropriations and so on it’s not as big an issue.”..

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Read More @ Has the long-anticipated retirement tsunami finally started? – FederalNewsRadio.com.