The files in this project were obtained by BuzzFeed News from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, via the Freedom of Information Act.





Before continuing, please read the following:





This overview article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jsvine/sharing-hundreds-of-millions-of-federal-payroll-records The documentation in the "docs" folder: https://archive.org/download/opm-federal-employment-data/docs/

Additional notes:





The 1973-2014 files use a "fixed width" format, with the widths of each column specified in OPM's February 11, 2015 letter (see the next bullet point, however, for an important caveat). The 1973-2014 "status" files are missing the "Years Since Degree Range" column. As a result, for the subsequent columns, the start/end-position specifications listed in "docs/2015-02-11-opm-foia-response.pdf" are slightly off. For the correct column positions, subtract 6 from the start/end positions of those columns. The 2016-12-to-2017-03 data includes only "status" data and not "separations" or "accessions." At the time that OPM provided the status data for those quarters, no new separations or accessions data were yet available.

For questions or feedback, please contact jeremy.singer-vine@buzzfeed.com.