Senior Executive Service Report Finds That Women and Minorities are Underrepresented in Most Legislative Branch Agencies

Senior Executive Service (SES) officials are the most experienced segment of the federal government’s career workforce. Racial and gender diversity in federal agencies’ SES ranks can bring a variety of perspectives and approaches to policy development and implementation. This report, for the first time, analyzes the racial and gender diversity of the SES corps in six legislative branch agencies: the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Library of Congress (LOC), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Government Printing Office (GPO), the Capitol Police, and the Architect of the Capitol (AOC). The report finds:

• In fiscal year (FY) 2007, 16.8% of the SES in the legislative branch agencies were minorities and 35.8% were women. In some agencies, the representation of minorities and women in the SES was much lower. For example, minorities comprised less than 8% of the SES at CBO, and women represented less than 19% of the agency’s SES corps. Four agencies (CBO, GPO, AOC, and the Capitol Police) had no Asian SES officials.
• The SES at each agency was less diverse in terms of minorities than its workforce as a whole in FY 2007 and was less diverse in terms of women in four of the six agencies (see figures 3 and 4 in the report). For example, GPO’s workforce was almost 60% minorities and more than 42% women, but minorities and women each represented less than 12% of its SES.
• The representation of minorities in the legislative branch SES has stagnated and the representation of women improved only slightly between FY 2002 and FY 2007. The percentage of minorities decreased by nearly 1 percentage point in the legislative branch SES between FY 2002 and FY 2007. The slow increase in the percentage of women in the legislative branch SES (4 percentage points in 5 years) indicates that at this pace it could take another 17 years for women to reach 50% of the SES.
• Some agencies’ GS-15 “successor pools” were less diverse than their SES corps. LOC, CBO, the Capitol Police, and AOC had a smaller percentage of minorities at the GS-15 level and LOC and AOC had smaller percentages of women. If these agencies hire future members of the SES in proportion to these pools, the diversity of SES will diminish at each of these agencies.
• In some agencies, average total compensation for minorities and women in FY 2007 was less than their non-minority and male counterparts. Three agencies’ average total compensation for minority SES officials was less than that for non-minorities (GAO, LOC, CBO), and three agencies’ average total compensation for women SES officials was less than that for men (CBO, GPO, and Capitol Police). The largest differences were found at CBO, where minority SES officials received an average of $6,000 less than non-minorities, and women SES officials received an average of nearly $10,000 less than men.