I haven’t seen the same volume of work from most federal agencies since the federal hiring freeze occurred. Anyone else seeing less work? Seems like we’ll all see less work with these continuing freezes and resignations from federal employees. It will trickle all the way down from the federal workforce to the contractor workforce. The federal government and contractor workforce won’t be growing in size the next four years. It will be decreasing in size. This will signify less clearance applicants and less work especially with reinvestigations all but a thing of the past.
Next step will be the “fork in the road” for many federal agents and contract investigators being laid off or forced to resign as the new administration continues to cut spending and cut back employees in the federal government. Could be a real interesting year in 2025. Who will be able to weather the storm?
I agree the shutdown is a coming! Let’s just hope all the Coast Guard, BOP, and TSA workers who won’t get paid are still willing to do their jobs without pay this time. Last time they had a sense of certainty they would eventually get back pay. I don’t think any of them will feel certainty in that right now. Those 3 agencies could cause true havoc if they did a walk out.
I remember doing a BOP employee’s background investigation during the last major government shutdown and thinking no way I would be doing this for no pay.
That’s pretty incendiary language to be casually thrown about in today’s already tense political climate. I’d caution against it, for the good of the country we all love, unless you can back it up with a sound legal argument.
It’s just a matter of time before this thread is shut down by Marko. Go find a political thread to go argue about political decisions on X. The purpose of my post was to drive discussion about the work slowdown due to the federal hiring freezes and reduction of the federal workforce. Regardless if you agree or disagree with the administration, I simply don’t care. The things we should all be focusing on is a possible new career option or adapting to this changing environment with less and less work.
The administration’s plan as I understand it (not judging it) is to offload as many government functions to the states as possible. So I would say don’t expect much federal hiring for the foreseeable future.
I think a lot of the Fed work will low key slide over to contractors. The public facing push is to cut spending but a lot of the work will need to be done. It wouldn’t surprise me to see these functions pushed out to contractors. The end result is that investigations will continue but for contractor employers vs fed agencies.
Interesting. You see DCSA federal agents laid off and their positions eliminated as well?
I’m not sure how legally that can work with most of the federal staff are career permanent employees but I guess anything is possible.
I wouldn’t mind the federal government having one agency conducting all federal B.I’s. I would like to see the consolidation to one agency. Why do we need the FBI, Department of State, ATF, the Intel agencies, and DHS conducting their own investigations either with direct federal contractors or through various vendors? Have one agency conduct all federal B.I’s.
I also believe investigators should be unionized as to protect us against false claims and unfounded allegations from the public and the ability to create a better work environment and better pay for ourselves. The starting pay for this profession should be around $65,000 per year and for an experienced Investigator of five plus years, the pay should be around $90,000. For Investigators at this business for fifteen years or more the pay should be around $130,000.
And there should be a retirement or pension we are paying into for this civil service function.
As an IC, I’ll have to work until I’m 70, just to retire because I have no federal pension or retirement. Why should I be penalized as a contractor but federal staff get a retirement when we are providing the same civil service function to the American people?
Contractors make more money, Feds get better benefits. It balances out. The real issue is how many feds have a total disdain for the contractors and treat them like complete garbage. Guessing it’s because they don’t like that contractors are making more money than them.
I’m not an investigator. I never worked at either of those places. At every agency I’ve worked, the contractors made significantly more than the equivalent feds. But the feds had much better benefits and never worried about losing their jobs. That’s always been the trade-off.
That is a real possibility. Contractors usually cost more but it’s a way for the admininstration to feed business and money making to their donors/supporters in the big business world. Elon and Eric Prince are chomping at the bit
Civil Servant’s get pensions and much more generous time off/vacation/paternity, etc. and usually they don’t expect to get laid off at any time like contractors could be. It’s a trade off.