NEW YORK, NY — For years politicians and commentators from both parties have complained about the state of the federal civil service. They have noted the federal government’s inability to remove poor performers, its slowness in hiring, and its convoluted procedures. Recent layoffs and removals by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have revived debates about the service. However, in a new report, Manhattan Institute fellows Judge Glock and Renu Mukherjee show how states have undergone much more radical civil service reforms than anything proposed at the federal level, and the results have been positive.
While the goal of civil service reform in the 19th century was to prevent political patronage and ensure objective standards for hiring, today the civil service often protects poor workers and prevents hiring good ones. Since the 1990s, bipartisan movements in states such as Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Missouri have undergone what has been called “radical civil service reform,” including extensive deregulation of hiring and firing. Studies show improvements in efficiency and little to no increase in politicization.
Thus, the authors argue it would be advantageous for the federal government to pursue these reforms as well. Four major lessons emerge from their analysis:
- At-will employment should be the norm, not the exception, for federal workers. States that have created at-will employment and kept employee grievances inside departments have seen improved management and limited evidence of politicization or patronage.
- Decentralized and flexible hiring should be fully adopted by the federal government. Many states since the 1990s have granted individual departments extensive flexibility for hiring; the federal government, despite some notable reforms, lags behind.
- More flexibility for pay should be adopted at the federal level. Many states have limited the number of job classifications, collapsed the number of pay bands and expanded their range, and increased the use of merit pay. The reports on these reforms have been generally positive, although the manner in which they have been implemented has determined whether or not they were a success.
- Union collective bargaining over the conditions of employment should be banned at the federal level. States that have limited or have resisted public employee union collective bargaining by all reports have more efficient service.
Click here to read the full report.
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