Have you considered a military career? If you have a degree, you can likely get a commission, but either way, officer or enlisted, it’s a good life and you can retire after 20 years w/ a respectable pension and still be young enough for a second career.
It’s a serious comittment, but it has lots of preqs, including foreign travel, 30 days paid leave per year, excellent medical and, most importantly, a sense of fulfillment.
While there are standard benefits for practically all federal civilian jobs as described by many above, make sure you study the OPM web site.
Also, federal agencies are not equal. Funding levels vary quite a bit, especially the past seven plus years. Our agency is looking at a 25 percent cut in jobs across the board this fiscal year. When added to other cuts since Bush took office, we’re talking up to a 70 percent reduction in jobs for our agency, even though the workload has not decreased by that amount, nor the Congressionally mandated responsibilities we must maintain.
I did a similar job in private at a greater salary than the taxpayers pay me. In fact in our last salary survey, my salary needs to more than double to compare against the private sector. I returned to government service because the relative stableness of a federal career position compared to private sector, the benefits (especially for those permanently hired prior to 1984 who come under the old retirement system), and other intangibles make staying more than worthwhile.
The old stories about lazy govt employees doesn’t hold water with me. I’ve worked in private, academia, and federal, state and local govt jobs and all employers have their share of lazy staff.
Wow. I’m overwhelmed by the helpfulness, detail and good information in these posts. I can’t refer to them all, but to everyone who has responded so far, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am seriously considering looking this way now. It’s kind of exciting. Thanks for taking all that time to give me that info. Tamerlane, thanks so much for that breakdown.