Limited Hiring of Hispanics Is Called Into Question

By Stephen Barr
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page C02

New census data show that Hispanics are the fastest-growing population group in the nation. When it comes to federal employment, however, they remain underrepresented.

A recent government report shows that Hispanics make up 12.2 percent of the private-sector labor force, but only 6.9 percent of the federal workforce.

Give or take a few tenths of a percentage point, that's been the case for several years, and is increasingly prompting Hispanic groups and diversity advocates to question why the government lags in the hiring of Hispanics.

"We're very concerned about the lack of progress," said Brent Wilkes, the national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

"At the simplest level, federal agencies have to hire Latinos. And they don't. There is not enough emphasis put on that with the people who do the hiring," he said. "They are allowed to bump along and continue the hiring procedures of the past, and no one is held accountable."

In looking at federal hiring data, Jorge E. Ponce, co-chair of the Council of Federal EEO and Civil Rights Executives, estimates that Hispanic representation in the government went up 1.6 percent from 1990 to 2002. If the trend holds, he said, "Hispanics in the federal sector will never reach parity with the civilian labor force."

The government, in general, has a solid track record when it comes to hiring ethnic minorities. Blacks represent more than 17 percent of the federal workforce, about 6 percentage points higher than in the nation's labor force. Native American representation in the government is about 1 percentage point higher than in the private sector. Asians and Pacific islanders fare about as well as they do in the private sector.

Some experts suggest that Hispanic hiring lags because many civil service jobs are not in states that have large Hispanic populations and because many Hispanics find it hard to match their skills with federal job requirements. Most federal jobs, for example, require U.S. citizenship, an obstacle for numerous Hispanic job applicants.

Still, civil service rules direct agencies to reflect the nation's diversity, and a 1997 Merit Systems Protection Board study recommended that agencies dedicate more resources to hiring qualified Hispanics. The issue has become more politically sensitive in recent years as the number of Hispanic voters has surged.

The government's most recent study of Hispanics reports that federal agencies (excluding the U.S. Postal Service, intelligence agencies and others outside the traditional civil service system) employed 113,418 Hispanics as of last Sept. 30. That was an increase of 6,151 Hispanic employees compared with the previous year.

The majority of Hispanics are clustered in the government's entry-level and middle pay grades and in blue-collar jobs, according to the report. In 2002, about 38,000 Hispanics were in General Schedule grades 9 through 12, with about 32,000 in grades 5 through 8. An additional 14,000 were classified as holding blue-collar jobs.

As "grade levels go up, the Hispanic representation goes down," Ponce observed. He noted that the report lists 504 Hispanic employees in "senior pay" positions and about 1,800 at GS-15, the top rung of the pay scale for most federal workers. "It would seem that agencies should be hiring more on the high end of the pay scale," at the GS-13 through executive level, Ponce said.

The report, prepared by the Office of Personnel Management, says that some agencies "can do better" and provides examples of successful approaches to Hispanic recruitment. For example, Social Security uses Spanish-speaking recruiters, advertises in publications aimed at Hispanics and has an internal committee to advise it on Hispanic issues. (The report does not examine the Transportation Security Administration, which hired almost 50,000 airport security screeners last year and worked with community and civil rights groups to recruit minorities. About half the screeners are minorities, and Hispanics make up about 12 percent of TSA screeners.)

In a cover letter for the report, Kay Coles James, the OPM director, said she thinks the trends for Hispanic hiring are headed in the right direction and pledged that the administration "will continue to reach out to the many talented and skilled citizens within the Hispanic community."