Uncle Sam looking for workers with certain skills

WASHINGTON — Need a job? Have a background in security, health and medicine or the sciences? If the answer is yes, the federal government wants you. Desperately.

Uncle Sam will need to fill more than 37,500 security and law-enforcement-related jobs in the next two years, according to a first-of-its-kind survey on the employment needs of the 15 largest departments and nine independent agencies that represent 95 percent of the federal work force.

Those jobs range from criminal investigators and police officers to security and prison guards and airport screeners, according to the study by the Partnership for Public Service and the National Academy of Public Administration. It was released today.

The report says the government is facing an employment shortage because of anticipated retirements among baby boomers and the reluctance among recent college graduates and other job seekers to pursue careers in the maligned federal bureaucracy.

"The federal government today is under crisis," Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service, said in an interview. "You're seeing broad hiring needs across many agencies that will be necessary for the federal government to get the job done."

The government expects to hire more than 25,700 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and medical technicians in the period, along with more than 23,800 workers with expertise in engineering and the sciences: physicists, chemists, biologists, botanists and veterinarians, the study says.

Rounding out the top-five list are:

• Management and administrative positions, including public-affairs and human-resource specialists and congressional-affairs officers. More than 17,000 new hires are expected.

• Accounting, budget and business jobs, including IRS revenue agents and tax examiners. Nearly 13,000 new hires are expected.

Stier said the report is designed to help the government focus on its hiring needs and to make those seeking employment aware of the opportunities available in government.

In King County, there were 13,981 federal workers in 2003; statewide, there were 49,611 federal workers, according to TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse), a research center at Syracuse University.

Seattle Times news researcher David Turim contributed to this report.