IRS wants to sway millennials that it’s cool to work there

For the Internal Revenue Service to stay in business, it needs a youth bomb. More than half its employees are over 50 years old. Four years from now, about 40% of its workforce will be eligible to retire. Meanwhile, the share of employees under 30 has fallen to less than 3%. Half of those under-30s work only part-time. Only 650 people in its 37,000-strong workforce are under 25.

“Essentially, the IRS is facing its own version of the Baby Bust,” said 75-yearold IRS commissioner John Koskinen in a recent speech.

But what kind of a pitch can a recruiter for the IRS make to millennials? Come mentor your parent’s friends? Work with outdated technology? Join a storied bureaucracy?

It seems an obvious mismatch. But millennials may mesh well with the IRS in ways that aren’t obvious. The anti-tax, IRS-bashing Americans for Tax Reform released a statement after Mr. Koskinen’s speech that dryly suggested young people could fit in well at the dusty government behemoth.

“While millennials are often derided for being anti-social and glued to their technology, this aversion to real life communications makes them an ideal fit with the IRS,” wrote 22-year-old AFTR intern Alexander Hendrie. “Already, the agency does not answer phone calls at local offices and does not allow elderly or disabled taxpayers to leave phone messages. Taxpayers have also found it difficult and time consuming to get through to a human being this filing season.”

Millennials do want to work for an organization that benefits society and to see how their work is tied to the bigger picture, says Dan Schwabel of workplacetrends.com. The IRS is doing its best to market itself as such a place: “There’s an agency looking for new talent to enable growth for our entire nation,” reads the recruiting page for students and recent grads. “You’ll be part of a tax collection process that funds our nation’s most vital programs — from securing the nation and protecting social services, to maintaining parklands and forests, building libraries, opening museums, enhancing schools and much, much more.”

Young people also care about work-life balance, and government jobs have a reputation for being 9-to-5. Added bonus: Presumably the job involves staring at computer screens all day. Just change the ugly metal desk to a standing desk, and, voila, it’s millennial-friendly.