FDA is Hiring A Lot of New Reviewers and Managers at Higher Salaries
[Posted on: Thursday, July 5, 2018]

About 40% of FDA’s senior leadership will be eligible to retire next year and about 15% of its overall workforce of 17,000 employees could also be eligible to retire. And that has FDA very worried about replenishing the talent. In an effort to hire more aggressively not only to prepare for the possible large-scale loss of employees to retirement and greener pastures, but also to meet the hiring goals under the new laws, FDA is planning to revise its hiring practices to reduce the time to hire and offer salaries much higher than current to attract talent. FDA will also use non-governmental recruitment or placement agencies, recruitment through academic centers, offering recruitment bonuses, use targeted direct hiring, and other ways to find, recruit, and retain talent. There is special need to hire certain experts where the FDA salaries are much lower than that in the industry. For example, compared to outside the FDA, a veterinarian may get paid 65% lower salary at FDA, a medical officer may get 46% lower, a statistician about 41% lower, most technical reviewers may get about a third less than what they could be offered by the industry. This creates a huge incentive for these experts to leave FDA for greener pastures. Another area of concern for the FDA is retaining senior manager and supervisors. FDA says that many candidates for senior positions often report that their current salaries are well above the $400,000 salary cap at FDA. FDA proposes to make it easier to hire more employee at salaries much higher than currently allowed to attract candidates it desires. So, we should soon seen FDA employees getting higher salaries and more perks to go with it. If you are a talented individual, and would like to work at FDA, now is the time to try.