1.
Overview
GAO Report August 2006 |
In August 2006 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a little heralded
but very important report.
GAO Report GAO-06-832 said simply that the feds should stop counting non-citizen Hispanics
in the U.S. in gov't computations regarding "underrepresentation" of
Hispanics in U.S. federal employment.
GAO recommends that the feds adjust their basis for comparison to reflect only
Hispanics who are U.S. citizens. After all, GAO points out, the federal agencies
only hire U.S. citizens except in exceedingly rare instances.
Why is this seemingly obscure report so important, you ask? |
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It is important because for many years the feds have issued gloom and doom reports that
Hispanics were severely "underrepresented" in the federal workforce and
that federal employers needed to use more racial quotas to correct the imbalance.
But, as Adversity.Net has been reporting for the past five years, the feds have persisted
in counting non-citizen Hispanics in the U.S., as well as unemployed
Hispanics in the U.S., in their computation of "underrepresentation". |
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At the right is a graphic from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management purporting to prove
that Hispanics are underrepresented in the federal workforce.
According to OPM (as well as EEOC), in FY 2006 the proportion of Hispanics employed by the
feds is only 7.6% as compared with the 12.8% of Hispanics in the U.S. Civilian Labor Force
(known as the CLF). |
Chart from page 9 OPM's FY 2006 report.
The red notations were added by our editors. |
| Two
different ways of counting Hispanics |
Federal
Workforce (FW) |
Civilian
Labor Force (CLF) |
| U.S.
Citizens: |
YES |
YES |
| Non-U.S.
Citizens: |
No |
YES |
| Employed: |
YES |
YES |
| Unemployed: |
No |
YES |
| Proportion: |
7.6% |
12.8% |
|
But neither OPM nor EEOC discloses that the 12.8% proportion of Hispanics the Civilian
Labor Force (CLF) actually includes Hispanics who are not U.S. citizens as well as
unemployed Hispanics. (It isn't immediately clear to us whether these figures also
include illegal aliens, but they might.) |
Here's exactly what
the GAO reported in August 2006:
GAO-06-832 at report page 7 (physical document page 13)
GAO reports that when it takes U.S. citizenship and level of education into account,
Hispanics are actually 24 percent more likely to be employed by the feds than
non-Hispanic U.S. citizens.
2.
GAO Recommendations
| From
report pages 31-32 (or from physical document pages 37-38): "We recommend that the Director of
OPM and the Chair of EEOC do the following:
"Include
citizenship in their annual comparisons of representation in the federal workforce to the
CLF. To help ensure consistency, both agencies should agree upon a single source of
citizenship data.
"Work with
other Consortium agencies and the Census Bureau to incorporate citizenship data into the
2010 Census Special EEO File and incorporate such data into analyses under MD-715, FEORP,
and Executive Order No. 13171.
"We recommend
that the Director of OPM do the following: |
 |
- "Assess the extent of
participation by racial and ethnic groups in student employment programs—SCEP, FCIP,
and PMF—to help agencies maximize the use of these programs in their overall
strategic workforce plan. This effort should include:
"analyzing
participation in, and conversion rates to, permanent positions from these programs and
"reporting
governmentwide and agency-specific demographic data for the different racial and ethnic
groups reflecting participation in, and rates of conversion to, permanent employment from
these programs. These data are in addition to the data already reported on these programs
in its reports, such as in its statistical reports on Hispanic employment and in the Fact
Book."
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3.
Word Games
This is the very first government report I have ever read on the subject of racial
preferences and affirmative action that does not use the language of the racial preference
crowd!
Therefore, in my view, this report is as significant for what it doesn't say as
for what it does! Enjoy the word count chart, below.
| Sensitive
Term(s): |
Number
of Times Used: |
Comments
and Notes: |
| Affirmative |
1 |
Used
in the phrase "...maintain an affirmative program of equal
employment opportunity..." |
| Affirmative
Action |
0 |
Wow!
Not one use!!! |
| Citizen
or Citizens |
87 |
The frequent use of citizen and citizenship
is testimony to the GAO report's serious focus on the issue of citizenship as it relates
to doling out the affirmative action spoils. |
| Citizenship |
55 |
| Culture
or Cultural |
0 |
|
| Disadvantage
or Disadvantaged |
0 |
|
| Discrimination |
5 |
|
| Disparate
or Disparity |
0 |
|
| Ethnic
or Ethnicity |
35 |
Neither
term was used in the body of the report itself but did appear often in the appendices. |
| Impact |
1 |
Used
in the following sentence: "If it is determined that the agency's requirement
for an MBA is in fact job-related and consistent with business necessity, the agency
should consider whether other alternatives exist which will have less impact
on a particular group." |
| Inclusion |
0 |
|
| Inclusive |
1 |
Used
in the following sentence: "Understanding factors affecting representation is
important to developing an maintaining a high-quality and inclusive
workforce." |
| Multicultural |
0 |
|
| Over
Representation or Overrepresentation |
0 |
|
| Proportion |
4 |
In
none of the four instances of "proportion" was it associated with the word
"representation". |
| Proportional
or Proportionate |
0 |
|
| Representation |
215 |
Never
used in association with "over" or "under" (as in "over
representation" or "under representation") |
| Under
Representation or Underrepresentation |
0 |
|
| Sensitive
Term(s) |
Number
of Times Used |
Comments
and Notes |
4.
Links and Related Reading
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