Careers in PR/Law Enforcement

polarscribe
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 22:55:41 +0000

Polo08816:

That’s not entirely correct. The NSPS pertained to the Department of Defense. The majority of FLEO aren’t under the DoD.

The largest federal LE agency is CBP/Border Patrol, which is GL/GS.
The second-largest federal LE agency is the FBI, which is GL/GS.



Polo08816:

The downside of the GS system is that outside of FLEO, it’s extremely hard to recruit entry-level hires with critical skills (ie. Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, etc.). The problem is that even if you could (and you probably can’t) bring them in as a GS-10, a defense contractor pays nearly 25k/year more.

The GS classification system that rigidly lays out which jobs can be which grades does need to be made much more flexible. That said… I don’t think you can fix the problem unless you flat-out increase the GS payscale or go back to having supergrades. There’s lots of federal employees doing work other than CS/EE who are quite underpaid for what they do vs. the private sector. Hell, even SES only tops out at $230,000.

(I’m currently a GS-0499-05 with the USDA/FS, transitioning to GS-1035-09/11 this summer.)