Federal Workforce

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the extent of employee attrition at the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) and similar agencies.

GAO noted that: (1) during fiscal years (FY) 1992 through 1996, 220 employees left Ex-Im Bank; (2) 15 of these employees had received retention allowances, 58 were in core professional occupations, 38 were in noncore professional occupations, and 124 were in administrative occupations; (3) during this period, Ex-Im Bank had attrition rates for all of its employees that ranged from 0.4 to 12.7 percentage points lower than the Agency for International Development's (AID) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation's (OPIC) rates for all their employees; (4) during these 5 fiscal years, Ex-Im Bank also experienced lower attrition rates of core professional employees than did AID and OPIC for employees in the same occupational series; (5) during FY 1992 through 1996, Ex-Im Bank experienced core employee attrition rates ranging from 7.0 to 17.9 percentage points lower than AID's and 3.7 to 22.0 percentage points lower than OPIC's rates for the same occupational series; (6) Ex-Im Bank experienced losses of 7, 9, 15, 11, and 16 employees from its core professional occupations during FY 1992 through 1996, respectively; (7) the number of employees in the core positions, however, remained relatively constant due to new hires and transfers from other occupational series within Ex-Im Bank; (8) during FY 1993 through 1996, Ex-Im Bank had 159, 184, 183, and 188 employees, respectively, in its core professional occupations; (9) in FY 1992, Ex-Im Bank had significantly fewer core employees, 129, but Ex-Im Bank also had 103 fewer total employees at that time; (10) the three agencies' attrition rates for their other employees, noncore professional and administrative, varied in relation to one another during FY 1992 through 1996; (11) Ex-Im Bank and AID had the highest rates in FY 1992 and 1994, respectively, and OPIC had the highest rates in the other 3 fiscal years; and (12) Ex-Im Bank's higher attrition rates for the other employees were primarily due to higher attrition rates for its administrative employees.