NASA - Moe Chizari

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:

Rankings year	Place among large agencies	Partnership engagement and satisfaction score	Source
2012	First	72.8	[5] [9]
2022	First, 11 years in a row	84.3	[6] [9]
2023	First, 12th year in a row	82.5	[7] [9]
2024	First, 13th straight year	81.6	[8] [9]

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].

The workforce in OPM's public data

OPM's Federal Workforce Data counts NASA's civil servants at each fiscal year end. The shaded band marks my years, 2022 to January 2024. These are public counts for the whole agency, not figures from my work. [12]

NASA employees in OPM's September snapshots, 2014 to 2025, and in August 2026, the newest file: 17,691 in September 2014, 18,162 at the high in September 2023, 15,387 in August 2026. [12]

Hires (accessions, transfers in included) and departures (separations of every kind) by fiscal year, counted by the date each action took effect. In fiscal year 2025, 603 joined and 1,626 left, 419 of them under the Deferred Resignation Program. [13]

The numbers

Snapshot	Employees
September 2014	17,691
September 2015	17,260
September 2016	17,251
September 2017	17,189
September 2018	17,183
September 2019	17,212
September 2020	17,728
September 2021	18,029
September 2022	17,892
September 2023	18,162
September 2024	18,150
September 2025	17,514
August 2026	15,387

Fiscal year	Hires	Departures
FY2015	599	1,012
FY2016	886	895
FY2017	937	937
FY2018	1,047	1,021
FY2019	1,180	1,139
FY2020	1,441	938
FY2021	1,238	978
FY2022	1,187	1,330
FY2023	1,442	1,134
FY2024	1,163	1,191
FY2025	603	1,626

Timeline

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

Sources

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

Workforce analytics for the agency's civil service.