COMP NEWS – US federal employees’ job satisfaction has dropped this year, according to the 2022 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.
US federal employees are significantly less satisfied in their jobs this year than in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – and are particularly dissatisfied with pay, a major survey has found.
The 2022 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) has found that 62% of feds were satisfied in their work, down seven points since late 2020. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – which oversees the survey – put the drop down to pay lagging behind inflation and feds’ reluctance to return to the office after more than two years of remote working prompted by the pandemic.
However, the employee engagement score in this year’s index – which considers feds’ perceptions of leadership, their relationship with their supervisors and their feelings of motivation and competency in their roles – remained stable at 71%, the same score as last year and one point down on 2020.
The area where US federal employee job satisfaction fell most was in pay satisfaction, a result possibly exacerbated by rising inflation this year.
The overall satisfaction score is the average across four categories: job satisfaction (66% in this year’s survey); whether respondents would recommend their organization as a good place to work (65%); organizational satisfaction (60%); and pay satisfaction (which received the lowest score, at 56%).
Scores in the first three categories have each dropped by six points on 2020, while pay is down 11 points over the same period – one of the largest drops of the 2022 survey.
Looking back at survey results over the last five years, overall satisfaction scores, as well as those in the four individual categories, either improved or stayed the same year-on-year between 2018 and 2020, but then declined in 2021 and again (but to a lesser extent) in 2022.
The OPM put the satisfaction score decrease down primarily to pay. “Results could reflect changes in the context when living costs rose without a corresponding increase in pay for most employees,” it said.
To read more about the survey and how US federal employee job satisfaction fell, click here.
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