Workforce analytics for the agency's civil service.

From 2022 to January 2024 I was an Operations Research Analyst at LMI, working for NASA Headquarters as LMI's client. NASA's workforce figures, rankings and report findings come from the public documents listed at the end.

What I did

At NASA Headquarters I built workforce analytics spanning NASA's civil-service workforce: about 17,800 people across Headquarters and the Centers [1].

I designed statistical models, and Tableau and Python dashboards, on workforce composition, retention and resource optimization across NASA's mission directorates [1].

Those dashboards included NASA's agency-wide DEIA dashboard, built in Tableau; as far as I knew at the time, it was the first DEIA work across a full federal agency.

I partnered with NASA Headquarters leadership on data-governance standards and executive reporting.

What the public record shows

NASA's own workforce data counted 17,814 civil servants in February 2022 and 17,962 in February 2023, spread across its Centers, facilities and Headquarters [1] [2]. Its Inspector General put the figure at over 18,000 as of April 2023 [4]. NASA's organization chart lists ten Centers, one of them the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center, and five mission directorates alongside a Mission Support Directorate [1].

NASA's two counts come from the Workforce Information Cubes for NASA (WICN) [1] [2], drawn from NASA's personnel and payroll system. WICN holds a record for every civil-service employee, snapshots of workforce composition as of set dates, and personnel actions such as hires, losses and promotions [3]. On data governance, NASA places its evidence building, data management and data access within the framework of the Evidence Act of 2018, and its evidence capacity assessment is led by the Evaluation Officer with the Statistical Officer and the Chief Data Officer [2].

In its April 2023 report on NASA's efforts to increase the diversity of its workforce, the Inspector General wrote (page 19) that the DEIA Strategic Plan NASA updated in 2022 calls for "the creation of a DEIA dashboard" to give hiring managers and senior leaders "access to demographic data", and that "Previously, this DEIA data was not centralized or accessible to NASA leadership" [10].

In November 2023 the Inspector General named attracting and retaining a highly skilled and diverse workforce one of NASA's top management and performance challenges. It reported that 23 percent of the workforce was eligible to retire as of July 2023, and that nearly 40 percent of the science and engineering workforce was nearing retirement [4].

Throughout these years NASA ranked first among large agencies in the Partnership for Public Service's Best Places to Work rankings, which are based on the Office of Personnel Management's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey [5] [6]. The streak began with the 2012 rankings [5] and reached 13 straight years with the 2024 rankings [8]. These are agency-wide results and public context for the period, not outcomes of my work.

NASA among large agencies, Best Places to Work:

Try it: a DEIA dashboard on NASA's public workforce data

A Tableau-style view of NASA's workforce by race and ethnicity, sex, grade band and disability, set against the civilian labor force benchmark, built from EEOC's public workforce tables for FY2017 to FY2021 [11].

Timeline

1. 2012 rankingsNASA ranks first among large agencies in the Best Places to Work rankings, based on the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. [5]
2. February 2022NASA's workforce data show 17,814 civil servants. [1]
3. 2022I start work for NASA Headquarters through LMI.
4. February 2023NASA's workforce data show 17,962 civil servants. [2]
5. 29 March 2023NASA ranks first among large agencies in the 2022 rankings, 11 years in a row. [6]
6. November 2023The Inspector General lists attracting and retaining NASA's workforce among the agency's top management and performance challenges. [4]
7. January 2024My work for NASA Headquarters ends with my time at LMI.
8. 16 May 2024The 2023 rankings: first among large agencies for the 12th year in a row. [7]
9. 7 March 2025The 2024 rankings: first among large agencies for the 13th straight year. [8]

Sources

1. NASA FY 2023 Volume of Integrated Performance
2. NASA FY 2024 Volume of Integrated Performance
3. Workforce Information Cubes for NASA, data.nasa.gov
4. NASA OIG, 2023 Report on NASA's Top Management and Performance Challenges
5. NASA release HQ-12-433, NASA Named Best Place to Work in Government
6. NASA release 23-038, NASA Receives Top Honor of Best Place to Work in Federal Government (29 March 2023)
7. NASA release 24-071, NASA Earns Best Place to Work in Government for 12 Straight Years (16 May 2024)
8. NASA, NASA Earns Best Place to Work in Government for 13th Consecutive Year (7 March 2025)
9. Partnership for Public Service, Best Places to Work: NASA agency detail
10. NASA OIG, IG-23-011, NASA's Efforts to Increase Diversity in Its Workforce (20 April 2023)
11. EEOC, Annual Reports on the Federal Workforce, Including Data Tables (workforce tables, FY2017 to FY2021)

Agency names are where the work was done. They are not endorsements.