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 2019 federal government-wide Best Places to Work employee engagement score is 61.7 out of 100, a 0.5-point decrease from 2018. This modest dip came during a time when about 800,000 of the 2 million federal employees were affected by a lengthy government shutdown, when there were a number of critical leadership vacancies at agencies across government, and when many agencies were dealing with a variety of political crosscurrents.

The 2019 data shows slight government-wide improvements in eight of 10 categories that help define the employee experience. The biggest gains were in training and development as well as performance-based rewards and advancement, both up by 0.8 points. Effective leadership, which encompasses employee views of their supervisors, senior leaders, fairness in the workplace and individual empowerment, rose 0.3 points. The categories with declining scores were pay, down by 0.4 points, and support for diversity, which dropped by 0.2 points.