It's the Blended Retirement System and it is a blend of a pension and an employer-sponsored retirement account. In the BRS service members went from 2.5% per year of service to 2% and gained a 5% match to their Thrift Savings Plan. So a member retiring at 20 years in the BRS would receive 40% of their base pay as pension vs 50% under the traditional military retirement system.

It's sad that, really, you just have to hope they break you enough to get VA comp as a pseudo-pension.

A lot of those are features of some government jobs, but not necessarily government jobs in general

they do not pay commensurate to similar jobs in non-gov positions.

No, but they do make up for it at least somewhat in benefits, which sounds like something OP is interested in, and since they're looking for a less stressful job, they probably have also come to terms with the fact that the pay would likely be lower

you must conduct mandatory quarterly drug tests to ensure you are in compliance to federal drug laws.

That varies on the nature of the job and the agency you work for. Like I said, I work in 911 dispatch, so I'm subject to a lot of federal regulations and such, including about drug use, but the only time I got drug tested was when I was hired, the only circumstance I'm subject to testing is if they have reason to think I'm intoxicated on the job. (The test when I was hired was a hair test, fun fact, at least at the place that did our testing, their policy is if you shave your head like I do, the next place they take a sample from is your armpit, I was expecting them to take it from my beard, but they wanted pit hair)

you must submit fingerprint and/or DNA samples

I did get fingerprinted, that is true. No DNA samples though. Not exactly unique to government jobs though, a lot of private sector childcare and healthcare employees, casino workers, bank employees, and security companies, just to name a few, require fingerprinting.

you must disclose many financial, foreign family, or unusual hobbies, so they can legally deny you things such as certain rights in case you are in a job that requires security clearances or NDAs.

Don't recall that ever coming up in my hiring process, and I handle a lot of privileged info. Not exactly a security clearance or NDA, but lots of personal info and such that I can't talk about outside of work.

it's difficult to promote to higher pay positions unless you grease the right hands and network the right people or simply be lucky right-place-right-time, you will simply stagnate in your place for a long time (or just simply be furloughed).

The same can be said about a whole lot of private sector jobs as well. Networking is a big deal. This also depends on the exact agency/department you work for, a lot of agencies do like to promote internally to fill openings and new positions when possible. At my work it's pretty rare to see someone totally new brought in to fill most of our positions we get people being promoted and moved around a fair bit when there's an opening, and most of my chain of command up to the director of my department started out as dispatchers and worked their way up through various supervisory roles, deputy directors, etc. Some positions are of course more of a dead end than others, there's only so many places you can move up to from courthouse clerk, but it can also be pretty easy to transfer to a different department, I've had a fair amount of coworkers move from the communications division (which dispatch is a part of) to logistics, IT, emergency planning, the coroners office, there have been cases where underperforming dispatchers have been found other jobs in the county, etc. And not everyone cares about promotion, I'm happy to keep answering 911 calls for the next 20 or so years, and I suspect that OP maybe doesn't care too much about long term career prospects since it sounds like= they're basically just looking for something to hold them over until retirement.

if the gov shuts down, you don't get paid.

If a private company shuts down, you don't get paid and you have to go looking for a new job because it's probably not going to open back up in a few days or weeks after the assholes in charge get their heads out of their asses.

All of these problems are fairly unique to the US government. I work for the Canadian government and none of that was a problem for me.

Apart from IT jobs, public sector pay is competitive with private. Depending on how much you value the pension and benefits, you could even say the IT jobs are competitive.

People openly talk about their drug use around the water cooler. There's literally no stigma at all unless someone starts talking about how much meth and crack they did last weekend. But like weed is super normal to hear about and I've even heard someone talk about using mushrooms before.

I had to do a simple police background check to get my job. No DNA.

I never had to tell them about my hobbies.

I didn't have to grease any hands for a promotion. Promotions are unfortunately mostly based on seniority, but in the right place they can be based on merit too. But there are lots of diagonal advancement opportunities, jumping around within your dept or between depts is totally viable. There can be a bit of a glass ceiling if you aren't bilingual, but there is free training offered to learn French to help with advancement. On top of that, our union contracts guarantee pay raises every year even in the same position.

Only the US government ever randomly shuts down because your country has this dumb feature where Congress can play chicken with the funds for public sector jobs. In most countries that's not a thing.

Holy beetlejuicing batman

Physical therapists are going to be physically manipulating people around helping them to do their exercises and such. You're going to be physically taxed a fair bit. Although in theory, PT's won't have to help a patient every time they need to get up to use the toilet like a nurse or nurse's aid would.

Have nurses in the family and have a few retired nurses as friends, they're pretty damn beat up. Almost everyone of them has either back or hip or joint problems. And the US is becoming more and more obese, were at like 40% now of the population, which obesity comes with more problems so your more prone to being in the hospital. I'm betting there are going to be even more nurses in the next 25 years with serious physical damages because of it.