More than 14,000 Federal Workers Filed Whistleblower Cases from 2014-2018
Probationary employees—generally those with less than 1 or 2 years of federal service—can be especially vulnerable to reprisal because they have fewer protections from adverse personnel actions, including termination, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.
GAO found that existing data are not sufficient to determine if the rates of filing whistleblower disclosures, retaliation complaints, or both vary by probationary status. The average annual number of probationary and permanent federal employees from fiscal years 2014 to 2018 was approximately 1.9 million employees.