Annual Report to Congress:
Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program
October 1, 2002 - September 30, 2003 (FY 2003)

Data Coverage and Definitions

(From page 50 of the FY 2003 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 2003 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.  Because of the 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, while Federal employment data exclude temporary, intermittent, or term-specific workers.  The CLF data include employed and unemployed U.S. citizens and noncitizens, while the CPDF data [OPM's Central Personnel Data File] are predeominantly 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 notes that the Code of Federal Regulations (5 CFR 720.202) defines underrepresentation in such a way that white males cannot, by definition, be underrepresented in federal employment and presumably therefore cannot be discriminated against in federal hiring!

          Equally pointedly, OPM also does not define a concept of overrepresentation whereby hiring too many members of preferred racial groups would be discouraged if not illegal.

          In fact, the 2004 OPM report -- just as the previous 3 years of OPM data we have analyzed -- continue to clearly illustrate that overrepresentation of selected races (overhiring) by the federal government is the standard hiring practice.

-- Tim Fay, Editor.

Our Computations
Calculating Over and Under Hiring of Minorities Using OPM's Data

Column A:  OPM data shows 6.2% as the proportion of blacks available in the civilian population for the specific jobs and agency in question (EEOC in this example).  This constitutes a de facto "affirmative action target" (quota) for EEOC.

Column B:  OPM data shows that 44.8% of EEOC'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 "racial target"; and (B) the actual employment of that race by the agency.  In the case of blacks at the EEOC the difference between (A) and (B) is +38.6%

Column D:  Using a simple computation, Adversity.Net used OPM's data to show that the percentage of blacks in GSA's workforce is 622.6% higher than the proportion of blacks in the civilian population.  Adversity.Net defines this as "overhiring" 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 Col A)

2004 OPM Annual Report to Congress (FY 2003 Hiring Data)
Tabulation of Minority Hiring at the U.S. EEOC

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

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

More FY 2003 Charts and Excerpts:

(0) OPM FY 2003 Minority Hiring
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