The Foreign Service Journal, June 2008

Burdens Outweigh Rewards Inadequate staffing, expanding commitments, insufficient budgets and poor management have left the Foreign Service a career out of balance. Anyone probing behind the headlines of the fall 2007 media flap over Iraq staffing would have seen a Foreign Service that is increasingly concerned that their loyalty is not being sufficiently re- ciprocated by their employer. In a survey AFSA con- ducted last fall of State Department Foreign Service members worldwide, the overwhelming majority of the 4,311 respondents faulted their employer for not sup- porting them with adequate resources and benefits. While significant financial and other incentives have been implemented to encourage war-zone service, employees elsewhere continue to suffer from ever-grow- ing financial disincentives. Due to congressional inaction on correcting the pay disparity caused by the exclusion of overseas Foreign Service members from receiving the “locality pay” salary adjustment given to other federal employees, U.S. diplomats now take a 20.89-percent cut in base pay when transferring abroad. In effect, Foreign Service members take a pay cut to serve at all 20-percent and below hardship differential posts — 183 of 268 over- seas posts (68 percent). At this rate, within three years, another 42 posts — those at the 25-percent hardship level without an additional danger-pay supplement — will fall into that category, unless the overseas pay dispar- ity is corrected. Losing the equivalent of one year’s salary for every five served abroad has serious long-term consequences for savings for retirement and children’s college funds — especially for Foreign Service families already suffering the loss of income from a spouse who cannot find employment overseas. It also contributes to a growing feeling that, rhetoric to the contrary, the Foreign Service is becoming significantly less family-friendly. There will inevitably come a point when this imbal- ance between burdens and rewards starts to hurt recruit- ment and increase attrition. That point may be approaching. Some 44 percent of the respondents to AFSA’s fall 2007 survey said that recent developments have made it less likely that they will remain in the Foreign Service for a full career. Attrition data recently made available to AFSA by State’s Bureau of Human Resources show that the mid-level generalist attri- tion rate was slightly higher during FY 07 (4.5 percent) than at any time since the last year of the Clinton administration (the last era when budget cuts and staffing gaps sapped employee morale). Entry-level officer attrition from FY 06 to FY 07 averaged 2.4 percent, compared with 1.7 percent from FY 03 to FY 05. Foreign Service spe- cialist attrition rates have generally remained stable. While these modest upticks in generalist attrition rates are not unprecedented and may ultimately turn out to be temporary blips, they could also be harbingers of things to come. Only time will tell. Recruiting trends may also be in flux. The number of people taking the Foreign Service Written Exam is down substantially since just a few years ago. As Shawn Dorman details in her article in this issue (see p. 15), that drop may mostly reflect the redesigned exam’s discour- agement of “frivolous” test-takers with little change in the number of serious applicants. However, one negative change is undeniable: there has been a sharp drop in female test-takers — from 39 percent of test-takers in 2006 to 30 percent in 2007 — even though females now constitute 58 percent of new college graduates. Something about the out-of-balance nature of today’s Foreign Service career appears to be disproportionately dissuading women from even starting the application process. An Institution at the Tipping Point? The rising burdens and stagnating rewards of service have left many Foreign Service personnel weighing whether they should vote with their feet. Yet the response of State Department officials thus far has essen- tially been to tell the Foreign Service to “suck it up.” And the Service has done so, as evidenced by each year’s suc- cess in staffing Iraq, Afghanistan and other greater hard- ship posts entirely with volunteers. But at some point this one-way loyalty will become unsustainable if resources are not increased, burdens are not ameliorated, and sac- rifices are not appreciated. Pending now before Congress is the president’s F O C U S 28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 8 Over 20 percent of Foreign Service members have served in an unaccompanied position within the past five years.