2 April 2009

New NASA Hiring Policy

Posted by Ryan Anderson

The NASA workforce is, on the whole, old. Yeah yeah, I know I think everyone is old because I’m just a young whippersnapper, but it’s true. The average age of NASA employees is 47. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t young folks (said the young’un who’s currently working at JSC) but we’re a minority. Back in the Apollo days, most of NASA was young. The average age of the people that got us to the moon was something like 27.

Apparently the aging of the NASA workforce has caused some concern because NASA just announced a new policy that 50% of all new civil-servant hires will be fresh-out hires. (Fresh-out is defined as being within three years of graduating from your highest degree)

I’m not sure what effect this will have on the agency beyond the obvious. It seems to me that hiring should be based on skills, especially for a place like NASA. Still, as someone who will likely be applying for a NASA job in the next few years, I can’t say that I mind this new policy…

For more information, read about the details of this new policy over at the Open NASA blog.

Edit: NASA Watch is skeptical that this is actually official policy yet… stay tuned.