Annual Report to Congress:
Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program
October 1, 1999 - September 30, 2000
(FY 2000)

Data Coverage and Definitions

(From page 4 of the OPM report.)

According to the Office of Personnel Management, the following definitions are applicable:

          "The Civilian Labor Force (CLF) data are derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics September 2000 Current Population Survey (CPS) and the 1990 Decennial Census.  The CPS is a sample of 50,000 households across the nation and the sample changes from year-to-year.   Because of the changing sample, there can be wide fluctuations in a group, like Hispanics, depending on which households are selected.  Due to small sampling size, the CPS does not have separate counts for Asian/Pacific Islanders or Native Americans.   Each group's percentage representation in the CPS was extrapolated using the 1990 census to calculate their proportional representation from the CPS "Black and Other" category.  The CLF data cover every non-institutionalized individual 16 years of age and older, employed and unemployed U.S. citizens and non-citizens, while the CPDF data are predominantly Federally-employed U.S. citizens."

          "The Relevant Civilian Labor Force (RCLF) is the Civilian Labor Force (CLF) data that are directly comparable (or relevant) to the population being considered in the FW (Federal Workforce).   For example, if we were analyzing representation of black engineers employed in the Federal workforce, we would compare them with black engineers reported in the CLF.   The black engineers in the CLF represent the RCLF in this example.  In the FEORP report, FW comparisons to the RCLF are the basis for occupational analysis."

          "Underrepresentation, as defined in 5 CFR, Section 720.202, means a situation in which the number of women or members of a minority group within a category of civil service employment constitutes a lower percentage of the total number of employees within the employment category than the percentage that women or the minority group constitutes within the civilian labor force of the United States."

Commentary:  OPM pointedly does not define overrepresentation for a given minority group, and there is apparently no upper limit on the numbers of minorities that can be given racially preferential treatment by government employers.  Notice also that OPM's definition of underrepresentation specifically excludes white males and other non-minorities.  Thus, under OPM's definitions, one can logically infer that it is not possible for white males to be underrepresented -- or even be discriminated against -- in federal employment.  -- Editor

Computations
Over and Under Hiring of Minorities

          The percentages in Columns A and B have been computed by OPM and are presented in their official report.  Columns C and D were computed by Adversity.Net and are derived directly from the OPM data in Cols A and B.

Column A:  OPM presents 7.2% as the proportion of blacks available in the civilian population for the jobs and agency in question (GSA in this example).  This constitutes a de facto "affirmative action target" (quota) for GSA.

Column B:  OPM data indicate that 28.3% of GSA's workforce are blacks.

Column C:  This is an intermediate number used in Adversity.Net's calculations and is simply the difference between (A) the "target"; and (B) the actual employment in the agency.  In this case the difference is +21.1%

Column D:  Using a simple computation, Adversity.Net used OPM's data to show that the percentage of blacks in GSA's workforce is 293.0% higher than the proportion of blacks in the civilian population.  Adversity.Net defines this as "over hiring" of the designated minority group.

          As noted on every page of our detailed analysis, there are two simple calculations Adversity.Net used to compute the over or under hiring of minorities at the federal agencies as reported by OPM:

Computation of Column C:
          Col B - Col A = Col C (difference between target "A" and actual employment "B")

Computation of Column D:
          ( Col C / Col A ) X 100 = Col D (rate of over or under hiring, expressed as a % of A)

OPM Annual Report to Congress FY 2000
Tabulation of Minority Hiring at the U.S. GAO

Note 2 -- Our computation:  Col (B) - Col (A) = Col (C)

Note 3 -- Our computation:   [Col (C) / Col (A)] X 100 = Col (D)

Other OPM Charts and Excerpts:  Minority Employment 2000

(0) OPM FY 2000 Minority Hiring
OVERVIEW