Does Kristoff from Frozen still have a job in 2017?

April 27, 2017 6:34 AM

How does the US federal hiring freeze affect jobs at government contractors? Does it matter at all? I'm sort-of job hunting was considering some permanent, full-time positions on site at federal agencies that are staffed by contractors, but I wasn't sure what job security was like in 2017.

I've only ever worked in the private sector and have zero experience with government jobs or contractors.

posted by bluefly to Work & Money (10 answers total)

I was a DoD contractor during the 2013 shutdown. It was fine for us, because the money for our contract had already been committed. We came to work even when no one else did (it was actually kinda nice to catch up on some long-range stuff). And then I was let go a few months later because our DoD agency didn't renew my position. So in one sense, I had more job security, but in every other sense, I had much less job security.

But this time will be different, because there's a difference between Trumpism and conservatism: conservatives want less government and are willing to sacrifice services to get it; Trumpists want less government because they hate the idea of lazy government workers, but they're not willing to sacrifice services, and the Trumpists are willing to exploit this by cutting government payrolls and then hiring contractors to continue those services, because their buddies who own the contracting companies get to carve off money for themselves and because contractors have basically zero protections against being fired or losing benefits.

So if the Trumpists win, contracting will increase; but it will be (even more) fraught with peril for the workers. And the conservatives will take every chance they get to cut those contractors out so as to kill the services.
posted by Etrigan at 6:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Contractors are as safe as their contracts. Some contractors are affected by freezes and shut-downs, but many federal contracts are active, will be unaffected by shut-downs, and even actively seeking new workers. But of course, to find such jobs, you need to approach the contractors, not the feds.
posted by ubiquity at 6:46 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the hiring freeze does not extend to contractors. If the government actually shuts down, it depends on who on the government side gets to keep working - during the last shutdown, some of us at my company still had active work to do. Others (myself included) had to find make work for the extent of the shutdown, and I do work for DoD. In fact, I had a collocated office on the local base and they locked the doors - I had to work out of a conference room at our main offices.

Contractors will find their lives frustrated by a lack of bodies on the government side, but business goes on. You'll probably find that communications get slowed down, answers to questions may not be forthcoming, stuff like that. Most agencies are already understaffed and overworked, so all of the problems that are caused by understaffing will just get worse.
posted by backseatpilot at 7:07 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Same as the above - was a contractor and kept working during previous shut downs.

Note also that, depending on where you're working and what types of work you do, the government employees may also keep working during a shutdown. Depends on the job and what they do. Last estimate I saw said between 2 - 2.5m civilian government employees are not directly impacted by a shutdown.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 7:52 AM on April 27, 2017

I have experience as a government contractor, and I would agree with the above - hiring freezes don't have much of an effect as far as I could tell. That doesn't mean this type of position is safe though, the lack of a federal budget and the long string of continuing resolutions mean that there is a lot of uncertainty and contracting positions are really designed to be eliminate-able. Everything is very agency-specific (and even potentially team-specific) though, so it's hard to give good general guidance.
posted by parallellines at 7:59 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

From what I'm hearing on the news, hiring freezes don't really cause a savings overall because they create an incentive for a government agency to hire more contractors instead of workers as an end-run round the freeze. Their payroll budget is unaffected by hiring lots of contractors because contracts are budgeted differently. So, a hiring freeze might be the best time to look for work as a contractor, if there is a best time.

On the other hand, once the freeze is over, they may be looking to put people back on the payroll and not renewing contracts. That could also be an opportunity, but it doesn't bode well for contract-job security.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:56 AM on April 27, 2017

Oh yeah, that reminded me about another weird thing about certain contracting vehicles. The agencies I work for use these "support services" contracts that cover everything from engineers to administrative assistants. These contracts are recompeted regularly and (I believe) are "lowest cost, technically feasible". The contracts frequently change hands, but the workers don't - they basically follow the contract around from company to company. In my opinion, it's a pretty bad deal for the workers because if Company B comes in and claims they can cover the contract at a million dollars less than the current Company A, they'll get the contract and cut everyone's salaries. Most recently, during a recompete somehow (don't remember if this was a company saying they would do it or the government giving up ground) they started allowing people with only high school diplomas to occupy technical positions that previously required a BS, with a subsequent cut in pay.
posted by backseatpilot at 9:06 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Nthing above: hiring freezes have no bearing on contractors, who are hired and budged differently than feds. The agency I sat in a few weeks ago was in fact making plans for their main contractor to hire a bunch more admin staff because of an...upcoming project.

Also: the hiring freeze has been thawed.
posted by General Malaise at 10:29 AM on April 27, 2017

The freeze did affect the length of time needed to acquire a clearance though. This includes contractors and can impact hiring if you don't already have an active clearance.

A bigger impact on contractors are gov't shutdowns. Non-essential personnel are told not to come into work. This is unpaid leave unless your contracting company is especially generous.
posted by LoveHam at 10:50 AM on April 27, 2017

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for your responses. In general, it doesn't sound a lot more risky than working in industry, especially in my field where things change rapidly and, thus, so does management.

backseatpilot: "Oh yeah, that reminded me about another weird thing about certain contracting vehicles. The agencies I work for use these "support services" contracts that cover everything from engineers to administrative assistants. These contracts are recompeted regularly and (I believe) are "lowest cost, technically feasible". The contracts frequently change hands, but the workers don't - they basically follow the contract around from company to company. In my opinion, it's a pretty bad deal for the workers because if Company B comes in and claims they can cover the contract at a million dollars less than the current Company A, they'll get the contract and cut everyone's salaries. "

Is this how it works when a company gets a contract for these "support services," and the contract ends? I checked the contracts covering some of the jobs which are listed as "permanent, full-time," and they are halfway through a 10 year contract.
posted by bluefly at 5:35 AM on April 30, 2017