The annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings, produced by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, measure employee engagement government-wide as well as at individual departments, agencies and subcomponents. The rankings provide a means of holding leaders accountable for the health of their organizations, shining the spotlight on agencies that are successfully engaging employees as well as on those that are falling short.

The 2018 Best Places to Work rankings, based on the views of more than 847,000 civil servants from 488 federal organizations, present a tale of two governments—one comprising 59.1 percent of federal agencies where employee engagement scores declined and the other where only 39.6 percent registered increases and 1.3 percent stayed the same. These results represent a stark contrast to the previous three years when more than 70 percent of federal organizations experienced gains in how employees viewed their jobs and workplaces.