NASA's Workforce Is Aging

NASA: Assessments of Major Projects, GAO

Pages 39-40: "Another trend, the aging of NASA's workforce, has both negative and positive effects. About 56 percent of NASA's workforce is 50 years old and over, an increase of about 7 percentage points over the past 5 years. Officials said that NASA's workforce is aging because NASA has a low attrition rate - about 4 percent annually - and high numbers of staff stay several years past retirement. We also found that, as of the beginning of 2018, 21 percent of the workforce is retirement eligible, about another 23 percent will become eligible in less than 5 years, and the average number of years staff that stay past initial retirement eligibility varied by occupation. On average, individuals remain at NASA between 4-7 years past their initial retirement eligibility date, but staff in the engineering and science occupations stay on longer than other occupations, such as professional and administrative.

Officials said there are both advantages and disadvantages to having an aging workforce. For example, human capital officials noted that having an aging workforce is good for maintaining institutional knowledge due to experienced staff staying longer, but that having a low attrition rate makes it more difficult for the agency to make changes to its workforce skill mix as needed. Officials within the Office of the Chief Engineer and Mission Support Directorate said that they were looking at ways to be more strategic in hiring or using existing capabilities to meet their skills needs."

Port of Los Angeles OKs SpaceX rocket plant on Terminal Island, Daily Breeze

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