Revealed: The best agencies to work for

The website Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, produced by the Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation, ranks employee satisfaction at 290 government organizations.

Are you happy in your job? No doubt everybody has complaints, but the good news is that employee satisfaction in federal agencies appears to be on the upswing.

The website Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, produced by the Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation, has taken the pulse of the federal workplace five times since 2003. The 2010 survey found that, governmentwide, overall employee satisfaction increased in 68 percent of federal agencies, including in 80 percent of large agencies, 69 percent of small agencies and 67 percent of agency subcomponents, which drills down to individual entities such as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Army Audit Agency and the Treasury Department’s inspector general’s office.

The surveyed covered 290 federal organizations, including 32 large agencies, 34 small agencies and 224 subcomponents. The overall score for government was 65, on a scale of 100, up 7.4 percent from the first rankings in 2003. Among large agencies, here are the top 10 and bottom five.

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