WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE: POTENTIAL CHALLENGES FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00530R000200270003-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 30, 2013
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 7, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

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WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE: POTENTIAL CHALLENGES 17 e
For some people, the concept of foresight in decision making
connotes images of crystal balls, for others pages of complicated
graphs or charts with fuzzy calulations. In the public policy
environment, foresight is an effort to review and analyze
interrelated trends, thereby alerting decision makers to potential
change, and thus helping government become more responsive to trends
and less reactive to events.
Given that its biggest operating budget item is people, the
federal government needs to pay special attention to any changes
that will affect its workforce. The key is to recognize the
importance of events or demographic shifts and make decisions today
that will mitigate or take full advantage of their impact.
When looking at the composition of the current Intelligence
Community and envisioning its future workforce, it is difficult to
avoid the "demographics as destiny" scenarios put forth in many
future-oriented analyses. These projections are important, and much
of the discussion here will use them. However, the Intelligence
Community, should it act on the best estimates of the future
workforce in the near future, will be better able to define the
composition and sources of its workforce rather than find it shaped
by the labor pool composition.
While "the future" is an abstract term, it is a fact that five
of every six people who will be in the labor force in 1997 are
already working or looking for jobs today. In 1988, the median
years of education required of new jobs is 12.8, 49 percent of
families have two wage earners and unemployment is at an eight-year
low of 5.5 percent. These factors will influence tomorrow's
workforce.
With an older, slower growing, more ethnically diverse and more
female workforce projected for the turn of the century, change will
become the norm in many respects. This paper examines changing
workforce demographics and values in the context of the Intelligence
Community of today and what it may have to do to respond to the
ever-changing components of the national security mission.
Who Will Work in the Coming Decade?
The end of the 20th century will see a labor force, and thus
employment, growing at a rate slower than at any time since the
1930s. The number of young people (age 20 to 29) will decline
relatively and absolutely from 41 million in 1980 (18 percent of the
total workforce) to 34 million in 2000 (13 percent). Essentially,
the lower birthrate of the pre-"baby boom" generation will reassert
itself.
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The median age of the population will be 36 -- older than at
any time in the nation's history -- and the workforce will age with
it, from a median of 35 years in 1984 to 39 years in 2000. The
proportion of the workforce in each age category will shift, as the
birth rate decreases, baby boomers age and the labor participation
rate of those over 55 declines, largely because of retirement
incentives. This latter point may be mitigated somewhat by retirees
who choose to reenter the workforce, perhaps in a part-time
capacity, after having retired from their original career.
Age Groups as Proportion of the Workforce: 1986
- 2000
Age Group
Proportion of
Workforce, 1972
Proportion of
Workforce, 1986
Proportion of
Workforce, 2000
16 to 24
23
20
16
25 to 54
60
67
73
55 & older
17
13
11
From the Department of Labor's Occupational Quarterly, Fall 1987
Between 1985 and 2000, 60 percent of new entrants to the
workforce will be women. By that time, 61 percent of all women will
work, and 47 percent of the workforce will be female. Their wages
will be 74 percent of those of their male counterparts, up from the
current 67 percent.
By the year 2000, non-whites will grow from 13.1 percent to 15
percent of the total workforce. In so doing, they will represent 29
percent of the net addition to the workforce. The greatest increase
will be among working black women, who will outnumber black men.
This contrasts with the pattern among whites, where working men
outnumber working women almost three to two.
New Workers and their Availability to the Intelligence Community
In general, most professional jobs in the intelligence
community (IC) are for those with at least one college degree, and
the IC seeks to attract recruits at or near the top of their
graduating classes or professions. Surveying current data, blacks
and Hispanics are clearly less well-off than whites in every
category of economic or social indicators -- unemployment rate,
median family employment income, percent below the poverty level and
median years of schooling.
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This data is not expected to change. College attendance rates
have historically been higher among whites than for blacks and
Hispanics, a function in part of the larger proportion of white high
school students who graduate than blacks and Hispanics (83 percent
of whites, 75 percent of blacks and 60 percent of Hispanics in
1984). While these proportions have risen (up seven percent for
blacks since 1978 and four percent for Hispanics), recent evidence
does not suggest increases in college-going participation rates for
minority group high school graduates.
Other factors indicate that, despite their growth as a
proportion of the workforce, minorities, especially black men, may
not find this a period of unprecedented opportunity. Several
factors may put them at greater employment disadvantage: much of
the job growth will be in higher-technology occupations requiring
more than their current or projected education level; many
employment gains will be in these metropolitan regions with
relatively few minority residents; employers may bid up wages for
the fewer higher-skilled candidates rather than open jobs to
lower-skilled workers; and businesses may attempt to substitute
capital for labor to offset projected labor shortages.
The Department of Education notes that there has been a
substantial increase in the number and proportion of the nation's
schoolchildren coming to school from background that increase the
chance that they will not do well in school. Many of these "at
risk" children will have one or more of the following
characteristics: poverty, non-English language background, and
single-parent families. This increase in the "at-risk" population
will continue into the 21st century. A large proportion of these
children will be members of minority groups, and will thus comprise
29 percent of the net increase to the nation's labor pool by the
year 2000.
The agencies within the IC may find it even more difficult to
create a workforce that represents each racial or ethnic group's
proportion in society, especially if minority college attendance
does not increase. As public and private sector employers
increasingly focus on equal employment opportunity goals, the
competition for talented members of minority groups will become even
fiercer. Given the relative difficulties in competing in terms of
compensation, the intelligence agencies may have to make additional
investments in areas such as the Co-op program and or some of the
initiatives fostered by the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence.
Critical Skill Shortages and Factors Affecting Them
Of all jobs created between 1984 and 2000, over half will
require education beyond high school, with one third filled with
college graduates. Today, only 22 percent of all occupations
require college degrees. The median years of education required of
new job holders will rise from 12.8 to 13.5 years.
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What such aggregate figures do not reflect is the more advanced
educational requirements of the intelligence agencies. More
important, not all of those with advanced degrees will be available
to the intelligence agencies.
The rate of growth in those receiving doctorates from U.S.
universities rose five percent in the late 1950s and that rate
doubled and then tripled in the 1960s and early 1970s. It peaked in
1973, declined from 1974 to 1976 and has stabilized since 1977.
While this may indicate that the intelligence agencies are
competing with other employers for a stable pool of graduates, the
proportion of those graduates who are foreign or naturalized
U.S.citizens has grown as the overall pool has contracted. Because
of security requirements, this means that a considerable portion of
additions to the most highly educated segments of the labor force is
not available to the IC.
This is particularly true for engineers. In 1982, noncitizens
and naturalized citizens together accounted for 15 percent of the
bachelor degree holders, 22 percent of the masters, and 36 percent
of the Ph.D.s in the U.S. engineering labor force.
This trend continues. In 1986, the proportion of doctorates in
the engineering disciplines earned by U.S. citizens were:
Electrical Engineering
41.2
Chemical Engineering
46.0
Civil Engineering
31.5
Mechanical Engineering
38.2
Other Engineering
42.4
With the number of foreign-born applicants to engineering graduate
programs exceeding the number of U.S.-born, these figures will
probably not decrease. A key factor is that salaries for those with
bachelor degrees in engineering are high, thus prompting them to
enter the workforce rather than pursue graduate studies.
This trend does not affect only the engineering discipline.
The National Research Council reports rising proportions of
doctorates granted to non-U.S. citizens since 1958.
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Degree Field
Doctorates Earned in the United States
1958 1978 1986
Proportion Proportion Proportion
US Citizens US Citizens US Citizens
*Computer Science - 70.2 50.9
*Mathematics 85.3 73.9 50.3
*Electrical Eng. 77.4 52.7 41.2
*Chemical Eng. 88.7 48.7 46.0
*Civil Eng. 69.2 38.6 31.5
*Mechanical Eng. 76.4 52.8 38.2
*Other Engineering 79.6 55.0 42.4
*Foreign Lang/Lit 85.4 84.3 64.9
Biochemistry 86.4 81.2 80.6
Business & Mgmt 91.7 75.0 61.4
Econ/Econometrics 77.4 66.6 55.1
History 91.2 91.9 82.6
*Indicated in the Conference Report to the 1988 Intel-
ligence Authorization Act as critical skill shortages.
Fields other than those identified as critical skill shortages
in the Conference Report are provided to show comparisons.
As fewer of those with the most advanced degrees in the
critical skill areas are available for intelligence work, the growth
rate for jobs in these occupations will also increase. The Hudson
Institute projects that growth will be 25 percent across all
occupational categories and: 41 percent for engineers/architects/
surveyors; 68 percent for natural/computer/ mathematical scientists.
(They offer no figures for foreign language occupations.) Only
lawyers and judges will have more occupational growth (71 percent)
than scientists.
While a larger proportion of foreign language doctorate
recipients are U.S. citizens than are those in the other critical
skill disciplines, this data becomes less encouraging when you
examine the number of doctorates awarded in 1986 for Russian (28),
Arabic (9), Chinese (13), and Slavic languages (8).
Recent trends show the most growth in advanced degrees in
computer and information sciences (38.7 percent more doctorates
awarded in 1986 than in 1985). For the same period, doctorates
awarded grew only 6.2 percent in mathematics, 5.6 percent in
engineering, and 2.5 percent in foreign languages. Engineering
bachelors degrees decreased 1.1 percent in 1986, the first decrease
in 10 years. Computer/information sciences and mathematics had the
largest increase in bachelors degrees awared that year -- both up
7.7 percent. Foreign languages increased 1.5 percent.
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There are not many projection figures for degrees to be awarded
between now and the year 2000. Education enrollment rates alone are
difficult to predict; the large declines projected for the early
1980s did not materialize, largely because of the increase of older
female students and a rise in the college-going rate of 18 to 24
year olds. However, the Department of Education believes that
enrollment decline will come, but later and less than had been
originally predicted. Overall head count enrollment levels are
projected to be about six percent lower in 1992 than in 1985. All
of the projected decline is in full-time students. This may
indicate more of the future college enrollees will be working
adults, many of them retraining for new careers.
Changing Values Associated with Work
With the demographic changes in the workforce, managers will
likely find their employees with different sets of priorities than
in the past. Current trends suggest that men and women are seeking
to balance career with family and that the pressure for more
flexible working arrangements will therefore grow, including demands
for company-sponsored day-care, part-time work, and childbirth leave
for both parents.
As the workforce ages, it may become more productive (on the
theory that age brings with it a more experienced, reliable talent
pool). At the same time, older workers and two-career families will
probably be less willing to make geographic moves.
More difficult to quantify is the worth of work to those
performing it. Through history, work has been judged to be of
value, and is characterized by extrinsic rewards (compensation,
benefits, status, etc.) and intrinsic rewards (personal achievement,
self-satisfaction, etc.). An Aspen Institute study focuses on
changing values toward work, and associates many of them with
"expressivism," defined as including values such as "creativity,
autonomy, rejection of authority, placing self-expression ahead of
status, pleasure-seeking, the hunger for new experiences, the quest
for community, participation in decision-making, the desire for
adventure, closeness to nature, cultivation of self, and inner
growth."
The post-World War II worker, having lived through the Great
Depression and managed to survive the immediate or threatened peril
of war, would have a hard time relating to such a list. While there
are no universal indices of "worker values," most manager would
acknowledge that their workers focus more on values associated with
"self" than they did a decade ago.
This workforce demands such things as more expressions of
social conscience on the part of their employers ("don't invest in
South Africa") and more flexibility in working hours and benefits.
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They want to participate more in managerial decisions, and they are
less likely to regard their current job as a lifelong career. Some
experts estimate that most workers will perform five or six
different jobs over the course of their working life, requiring
varying degrees of retraining for each change.
In response to these and other trends, some employers have
begun to perceive their workforce as a source of human capital.
With job retraining and job replacement costs climbing, high
turnover rates are becoming unacceptable -- just as it is
unacceptable to management to incur excessive costs due to poorly
maintained facilities and equipment. There is a growing willingness
to invest more in human resource development and training for
workers.
In the intelligence agencies, intrinsic rewards are an even
larger part of an individual's rewards system, if only because the
workforce can't talk about their accomplishments outside a very
limited circle. With a shifting set of values among current and
future IC employees, it may be even more important for IC managers
to address these value shifts than it is for other employers. The
lead times for hiring staff and the difficulty in replacing some of
staff members' expertise make it essential to retain valued
employees.
Conclusion
To a large extent, the Intelligence Community must address some
of the same issues that other employers will face -- a future
workforce that will be smaller and aging, among other factors. The
workforce will also have fewer people with the "blend of skill"
requirements needed by the sophisticated IC collection systems, and
a large and growing proportion of the new graduates with those
skills will be naturalized or non-U.S. citizens. Already in direct
competition with hi-tech private sector firms, this competition will
grow as related need for these positions expands as the worforce
contracts.
Since fewer masters or Ph.D. graduates are U.S. citizens than
are bachelor degree graduates, the IC could explore ways to attract
top quality undergraduate degree holders and further educate them in
their field. This would require an exemption from the Government
Employees' Training Act, which now prevents the intelligence
agencies from paying for education costs related to pursuit of a
degree.
Because a growing number workers will be from "at risk"
families and because of the expected need for workers to retrain
several times throughout their careers, it may be necessary for the
IC to provide more training related to direct skill attainment.
Employees hired by an intelligence agency, having met rigorous
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personnel security requirements and demonstrated a commitment to
public service, can be assumed to be worth retaining, and thus
retraining, as needed. This is not only a good human resource
management policy, but also economical, given the costs of
recruitment.
Anticipating future workforce composition cannot assure that
the intelligence agencies continue to attract top quality candidates
in the increasingly competitive workplace or that they can retain
the talented staff they acquire. However, long-range workforce
planning -- done in the context of a flexible human resource
management approach -- will enhance the intelligence agencies'
ability to control the skill mix of their staffs and how these
skills are applied to meet their complex missions.
155/ July 7, 1988
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