30 Years Versus 10
At the EPA, departing employees had a median tenure of 30.3 years. Those who remained had 10.8 years. The gap, nearly 20 years of experience, represents the difference between knowing how a system works and knowing how to use it.
30.3 years median tenure for departing EPA staff. 10.8 years for those who stayed. Nuclear safety, dam inspection, food testing, and air traffic control lost their most experienced people. Expertise built over careers cannot be replaced by hiring.
This was not random attrition. The most experienced workers were the most likely to have retirement eligibility, the most likely to be targeted by Schedule F reclassification, and the most likely to take the deferred resignation offer. The federal workforce lost its senior layer across every agency simultaneously.
What Institutional Knowledge Does
A nuclear safety inspector with 25 years at the NRC does not just follow a checklist. They recognize patterns that a newer inspector would miss, anomalies in reactor performance data that precede failures, maintenance practices that technically comply but practically increase risk. That judgment comes from experience, not training.
A dam safety engineer at the Bureau of Reclamation who has inspected the same structures for two decades knows their history, which repairs held, which ones are aging, where the stress points concentrate. A replacement engineer with the right credentials starts from documentation that may be incomplete.
The FDA food scientists who left when labs closed took with them the ability to identify contamination patterns quickly. The NOAA forecasters who departed knew which weather models to trust in specific conditions. The VA clinicians who left were the ones training their replacements.
The Pipeline Problem
Federal agencies historically replaced retiring expertise through overlapping service. A senior employee’s last three to five years included mentoring the person who would take their role. When 200,000 employees leave in 18 months, that handoff does not happen.
Hiring replacements at scale requires competitive salaries, security clearances, and training periods measured in years. Many specialized roles in nuclear safety, weather forecasting, and dam engineering compete with private sector salaries that the government cannot match. The positions that are hardest to fill are the ones most critical to public safety.
What you can do now
- Call your senators and ask them to oppose Schedule F reclassification and support restoring civil service protections for career federal workers. Senior inspectors at the NRC, FDA, and Bureau of Reclamation cannot be replaced by new hires with the right credentials alone. Use Resist Bot to send your message directly.
- Contact your House representative and demand oversight hearings on the deferred resignation program that triggered the senior workforce exodus. The EPA lost workers with 30.3 years median tenure while retaining staff with 10.8. Congress needs to investigate the safety implications at agencies responsible for nuclear safety, dam inspection, and food testing.
- File a comment with the Office of Personnel Management opposing any further workforce reduction proposals. OPM publishes proposed rules at regulations.gov. Federal hiring already cannot compete with private sector salaries for specialized roles. Further cuts compound the pipeline problem.
- Find your state’s delegation at your state page and ask whether they support funding federal workforce recruitment and retention, especially in safety-critical roles like air traffic control and weather forecasting that take years to train.