Across the federal workforce of roughly two million people, about 60 percent are rated outstanding or exceptional, and 0.3 percent are rated below satisfactory.
The Office of Personnel Management’s own commentary notes that most organisations of that scale would expect to see five to ten percent underperformance in any review cycle.
Managers will not write down a judgment about work, because in the American reading it is a judgment about the person — and they will be the one delivering it.