Your career: Are you Seinfeld or Waiting for Godot?

Are you stuck in the promotion pipeline? Pay stagnant, but health premiums going up?

Are you waiting for old Bob Cratchit in the next cubicle to retire, so you can move up to his job?

Is the kayak you bought to ride out the Retirement Tsunami suffering from dry rot?

Do you feel like you are treading cement rather than water?

Is your federal career — like an episode of TV’s Seinfeld — really a show about nothing?

Are you in the same boat as the two guys in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting For Godot, who is a no-show? The play, which one critic said “has achieved a theoretical impossibility — a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.” Is that you? Is nothing happening, yet you are glued to your seat?

Despite the dire warnings of a retirement tidal wave warning — first issued more than 15 years ago — people by now who were supposed to be playing shuffleboard in Florida are still coming into work every day. Thanks to pay freezes and the economy, the only way many feds have gotten raises is to get a time-served within-grade raise or a promotion, with the latter in short supply in many agencies.

Although nobody is getting any younger, many feds are still working although they could have retired years ago. How come? Folks on the promotion ladder would like to know. They can’t move up if somebody ahead of them doesn’t move out.

January is the most popular month for feds to retire. Part of that is because feds with lots of unused annual leave can cash it in at the new higher pay rate (if there is one) and also get a tax break . The lump sum payments, which can be worth thousands of dollars, are considered income in the first year of retirement, when most people’s total income is less than when they were working.

In January 2015, the Office of Personnel Management received 18,629 retirement claims.

In January of this year, the number was 15,423. Even though the number of people eligible to retire continues to grow, the tidal wave is nowhere in sight. How come?

So what’s going on? Is the government suffering the equivalent of blocked arteries?

This time last year, Federal News Radio’s Michael O’Connell wrote a detailed piece headlined: Feds choose to stay longer, creating new retirement bubble.

It was interesting and revealing at the time. It is even more interesting today because what’s happening — which in a sense is nothing — is still happening. Or not happening. So what’s the deal?

If you’re retirement-eligible, why haven’t you done it? Do you love your job? Are you afraid you won’t have enough income in retirement? Are you waiting for the economy to improve? We’d like to hear from you. You can reach me at: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

Academy Award-winning motion picture Kramer vs. Kramer was the highest grossing movie of 1979.

Source: IMDB

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