Latest FAIR inventory finds more commercial jobs

The Office of Management and Budget says an additional 537,000 federal positions are considered commercial and open to public-private competition under Circular A-76.

The Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act requires agencies to submit a list of all full-time equivalent positions to OMB each year.

This list, published last week, is the third for fiscal 2002 and includes position catalogs from 29 federal entities including the Defense and Energy departments and the General Services Administration. It identifies 537,517 jobs as commercial?more than half of the 1.06 million positions inventoried.

So far for fiscal 2002, OMB has looked at more than 1.4 million positions, of which 666,801 were deemed commercial.

A fourth inventory, covering the Veterans Affairs department and many small agencies, will be released shortly.

In fiscal 2001, OMB said the government had about 800,000 commercial jobs.