It really is hard to fire a fed
A recent report from the Merit Systems Protection Board challenges the perception that it’s impossible to fire a federal employee. But in 1978 a Democratic Congress and president, lobbied by unions, erected a system that does make removing a federal worker all but impossible. To support its assertion, the MSPB noted that more than 77,000 federal employees had been fired over a decade and a half. That sounds like a big number. It is not. Adjusting to include only workers past their probationary period, we arrive at a figure of just 0.15 percent of federal employees who are shown the door each year. Statistically, that is pretty close to ‘impossible.’
