In the private sector jobs are fluid. Some are lost due to changes in the business, some as a result of economic demands. People move from one location to another due to the demands of the business. Take the USDA. It deals with farms. There are few farms in DC but lots in Kansas. Remember the yellow brick road. So it would be logical to be proximate to what your job demands.
Now Science discusses the cry babies at USDA whose job was moved. They note:
On an unseasonably cold day in March 2019, hundreds of agricultural economists were herded into a conference room in Washington, D.C., to learn their fate.The previous August, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue had announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS), a small but well-regarded statistical agency, would be relocating somewhere outside of the nation’s capital to allow USDA “to provide more streamlined and efficient services.” One by one, a USDA official read the job descriptions of the 76 of 329 ERS positions that would remain in town. The rest would move.“It was awful the way they told us,” recalls one of several economists who requested anonymity because they still work at ERS. “People not on the list started crying.”That day was part of a seismic upheaval at an agency that essentially serves as USDA’s in-house think tank, analyzing and anticipating trends in agriculture, food and nutrition, natural resources, and the rural economy. Nearly one-half of its employees jumped ship between when Perdue announced the move and October 2019, when ERS opened its new office in Kansas City, Missouri, barely 3 months after the city won a nationwide competition to host the agency. (Kansas City also snared USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture [NIFA], which distributes some $1.5 billion in grants and contracts.) “I calculated that more than 2000 years of ERS experience vanished in 3 months,” says agricultural economist Marca Weinberg, a senior manager who took early retirement and then was rehired as acting head of the agency for the first year in its new location. “We lost the vast majority of our institutional knowledge and expertise, and it decimated the ranks of middle management.” Only a dozen or so ERS economists actually moved from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City.
The typical Government employee is demonstrated by this attitude. They feel they have rights to do what they want and where they want. In fact all of USDA should be moved to Kansas. As Interior to Montana, and many other translocation. The employees are NOT entitled. The work for the taxpayer and if costs can be reduced then the taxpayer benefits.
This is a truly classic example of how badly DC is managed. Hopefully downsizing can continue.
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