If job security is among your primary motivations when searching for employment, look not to the private sector. According to an analysis by USA Today, death is more likely to take you from your federal job before a layoff or firing will (not including postal workers, seasonal workers, or military personnel):
Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.
The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes. ...
The job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43% last year and nearly 100% for those on the job more than a few years.
How can this be? Is it because the federal government is a bastion of efficiency, smart hiring, professional vim, and committed vigor? Or is it perhaps because the federal government has metastasized into a convoluted, sluggish bureaucracy incapable of efficiently managing its many moving parts and unmotivated to hustle them, since it gets to play with an unmitigated supply of American tax dollars instead of its own well-earned profits? (H/t to Reason)