The Public Sector Pivot

How Gen Z Will Lead a Renaissance in Public Service

Kaitlyn Rentala

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781637300770
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The future of the U.S. is in jeopardy - and it's not just because of partisanship. In the end, hope for the future always lies in the next generation, and yet the government is ignoring this crop of energetic, purpose-driven workers.

Did you know only 7.3% of government employees are under the age of 30? If the U.S. is to thrive in the future then the public sector must seriously start considering hiring prospects in demographics like Gen Z. Addressing why so few young people work in government and what we can do to fix that, Kaitlyn Rentala's The Public Sector: How Gen Z Will Lead a Renaissance in Public Service explores the intersection of:

• Public Service
• Private sector methodologies
• Government reform

Immense societal issues like climate change, healthcare disparities, and economic inequality threaten the very existence of our country and world. None of these problems can be properly addressed without a strong public sector workforce. The Public Sector Pivot is both a wake-up call to the public sector and to young people who may have dismissed it as a career option.

Part I

How did we get here?

Chapter One

Business Influence in the Public Sector

“You know what you should do is go out and make a billion dollars first, and then run for office.”

Michael Bloomberg.16

Michael Bloomberg loves this quote; while I was researching him, a version of this quote came up at least three times. This specific variant comes from a New Yorker profile written in 2009 when Bloomberg was running for his third term as mayor of New York City. The author describes it as a half-joke, but I don’t think Bloomberg is joking at all. I think he’s completely serious.

Wealthy businesspeople politicians like Michael Bloomberg bring about a complex set of moral dilemmas. How democratic is our society if money can buy overwhelming influence? Does having a lot of money make a politician more or less susceptible to corruption?

This recent influx of businesspeople-turned-politicians has also created a much larger (at least in numbers) issue that will have dire effects on the health of our government and democracy: young people are being told not to start their careers in public service.

Having Bloomberg and other rich ex-businesspeople in public office sends a message to young people that if they really want to be effective in government, they should go work in business first.

According to a study by the Brookings Institute, 231 congresspeople of the 114th Congress—over 53 percent of the House of Representatives—had previous occupations related to “business or banking.”17 Just fifteen years prior, in the 107th Congress, 159 congresspeople—36 percent of the House—had previous experience in business.18 The same trend holds true for the Senate; forty-two senators in the 114th Congress have experience in business or banking as compared to twenty-four senators in the 107th Congress. Most other occupations remained unchanged.19 Increasingly, it seems that business experience is a prerequisite to a career in politics.

This trend is even more evident in the present day, with both Democrats and Republicans alike.

Besides Michael Bloomberg, who also ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, many other candidates also had extensive business experience. Even among Democrats, who typically try not to flaunt their business experience as much as their Republican counterparts, a substantial number of candidates pointed to their business background as evidence of their governing acumen.

Another billionaire in the Democratic field, Tom Steyer, pointed to his business background as a key differentiating factor between him and his more prominent rivals; “But here’s the truth: none of them . . . have built or run a successful, international business,” Steyer said, calling out former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg by name. “None of them have a private sector track record of creating jobs—none of them have first-hand experience growing wealth and prosperity.”20

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang similarly equated his ability to run a presidential campaign with starting a company. In a tweet from November 2019, Yang wrote, “When people ask if I’m surprised by the success of our campaign, I remind them that I have founded and run multi-million-dollar organizations that began with just an idea. This feels very familiar. And we are not done yet.”21

Even the young South Bend mayor, Pete Buttigieg, who at twenty-six-years old already boasted a Harvard degree and a Rhodes scholarship, felt the need to gain business expertise and spent three years at “the firm” (management consulting firm McKinsey). The New York Times remarked that Buttigieg’s time at McKinsey “set him apart from many of his campaign rivals, underpinning his position as a more centrist alternative to progressive front-runners like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.”22

While recruiting, Buttigieg made it known that he viewed McKinsey as “an asset on the way to a career in public service” rather than a long-term career move. McKinsey not only gave Buttigieg an inside look into corporate America but also credibility as he ran for president a decade later.23

Across the aisle, Republican businesspeople brandish their business experience with abandon.

One of the most prominent examples of a Republican businessman turned politician is Mitt Romney. After stints at consulting firms Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Bain & Company, Romney cofounded private equity firm Bain Capital, a spin-off of the eponymous consulting firm. While running for president in 2012 as the Republican nominee, Romney frequently pointed to his business credentials as proof of his ability to govern; “The lessons I learned over my fifteen years at Bain Capital were valuable in helping me turn around the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. They also helped me as governor of Massachusetts to turn a budget deficit into a surplus and reduce our unemployment rate to 4.7 percent. The lessons from that time would help me as president to fix our economy, create jobs, and get things done in Washington.”24

Romney went so far as to endorse a constitutional amendment that would require every presidential candidate to have at least three years of business experience: “I was speaking with one of these business owners who owns a couple of restaurants in town. And he said, ‘You know I’d like to change the Constitution; I’m not sure I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.’”25

Carly Fiorina is another Republican businesswoman who made a foray into politics. After resigning as CEO of technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2005, Fiorina served as an economic advisor to Senator John McCain during his presidential campaign in 2008. Her following political involvements include running for se...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part I How did we get here?
• Business Influence in the Public Sector
• The Efficiency Perception: Millennials vs. Gen Z
• Part II What are the Problems with the system now?
• Issues with the Public Sector Talent Pipeline
• Issues with the Federal Hiring Process
• Government Pay
• Part III Where Do we go from here?
• The New Public Sector Talent Pipeline
• The Civic Tech Movement
• How the COVID-19 Pandemic Will Change Public Service
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Appendix