Following the federal workforce reductions that have occurred this year, the Trump administration is now telling agencies to rethink how many senior executives they will need on staff as a result of those cuts. A Nov. 24 memo from OPM encouraged agencies to consider reducing their staffing allocations for senior-level positions within their workforces. No later than Dec. 19, OPM said agencies should submit a workforce assessment, detailing their current staffing allocations for various senior-level positions, and by how much they plan to reduce those allocations going forward — if at all. The memo includes a template that OPM expects agencies to fill out with more details on their projected allocations. Agencies’ staffing assessments should reconsider allocations for Senior Executive Service (SES) members, as well as Senior Level (SL) and Scientific/Professional (ST) positions, OPM said. “This review is especially important in light of headcount reductions and workforce restructuring, which may lead to a corresponding reduction in the need for SES, SL and ST allocations,” OPM wrote in its memo, addressed to agency chief human capital officers. OPM said the senior-level staffing assessments should also take into account how agencies are reaching “optimal implementation of presidential priorities.” “These assessments should also inform whether SES, SL and ST positions are appropriately classified and designated,” the memo reads. OPM’s memo comes in response to an Oct. 15 executive order from President Donald Trump, which maintains limits for agencies on their recruitment efforts. Agencies have spent most of the year under a governmentwide hiring freeze, with a few exceptions carved out for positions in immigration enforcement, national security and public safety. Trump’s executive order from October mandated that each agency create a “strategic hiring committee,” composed of senior officials and political appointees who will have to ensure that any hiring that does take place going forward is focused on “agency needs, the national interest and administration priorities.” Already, the Trump administration has surpassed its goal of reducing the federal workforce by more than 300,000 employees during 2025. After reporting that approximately 317,000 federal employees have so far left the government this year, OPM is now pushing agencies toward their next steps for staffing plans. At the same time that it’s encouraging a reduction of senior-level staffing, the administration has taken steps to give agencies more leeway in hiring politically appointed senior leaders instead. Over the summer, the White House created a new “Schedule G” employment classification, focused in particular on hiring non-career feds for roles in policy-making or policy-advocating work. OPM’s new memo on senior executive allocations also comes after those in higher-level positions across government have seen a number of other changes from the Trump administration this year. Most recently, OPM launched two new training series, in part focused on teaching senior leaders more in-depth about how they can best implement Trump’s workforce priorities, and to ensure they are adhering to “President Trump’s executive orders and other executive branch priorities.” The Trump administration earlier this year also overhauled performance standards for senior executives, making adherence to the president’s priorities the “most critical element” of their reviews. Agencies are now being directed to set stricter limits on how many executives can be considered top performers.The post OPM advises agencies to consider reducing senior executive staffing first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Trump administration’s deviation from some norms as it transitioned into the White House earlier this year is now raising questions about the future of presidential transition planning. Reflecting on the most recent White House transition, the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition argued in a new report that there is a need for bigger reforms in the transition process, particularly when it comes to transparency and security. In its report, the Partnership, a non-profit organization that advocates for non-partisan improvements to the federal government, recommended adding more safeguards into the transition process — such as strengthening security protocols, further clarifying the transition rules, and streamlining paperwork to speed up transition planning. It also suggested amending the overarching Presidential Transition Act to incentivize transition teams to comply with standard practices. Because transitions only occur once every four or eight years, the level of expertise around transition planning is already thin. But the Partnership said the losses to the federal workforce this year put the success of future presidential transitions at further risk. “Such guardrails will be particularly essential to ensure a smooth transition in 2028 because of the vast amounts of expertise being lost from government as a result of this administration’s reductions of the federal workforce,” the Partnership wrote. During the most recent presidential transition period, Trump’s approach was unlike any prior incoming administration — including his own transition into his first term in 2016. Leading into his second term, Trump’s transition team skirted longstanding norms by refusing to sign a standard agreement with the General Services Administration, which outlines support services such as access to office space, IT equipment and federal staff. The GSA agreement also triggers reporting requirements and limits how much money transition teams can fundraise. By subverting standard transition procedures and timelines, the Partnership said Trump’s team created security risks and caused significant planning delays. “This inhibited the team’s ability to prepare essential staff and enabled them to avoid disclosing transition donors, agency review team members and the use of their transition funding,” the Partnership wrote in its report. Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership, said the Trump transition team’s divergence from the norms signals a larger shift for the future of presidential transition planning. “The assumption had been that the candidate would want to follow these guidelines around security clearance, find their nominees for positions, bring in transition teams — but we didn’t see that as much during this transition,” Mattingley said in a recent interview with Federal News Network. “And during the course of the last 10 or 11 months, we’ve also seen some of the things that we thought were norms, and the ways of doing business, not play out.” During the transition process, Trump’s team also delayed signing standard agreements to define how the incoming administration would access agencies after the election, and another agreement on security clearance requests for transition team members who needed to access classified information. Mattingley said while the transparency in transition planning is critical, teams may want to use their own IT systems and office space, rather than accepting the government’s options. But because the GSA agreement is tied to other financial and reporting requirements, the public loses out on information about the transition process when it’s not signed, she explained. “By not accepting those services, all of a sudden, those transparency mechanisms don’t happen,” Mattingley said. “We’re certainly seeing a changeover in those particular types of processes.” A solution, according to the Partnership’s report, may involve changing the structure of the agency agreements, and adding updates to the Presidential Transition Act — the law that sets most standards for presidential transition planning. Specifically, the Partnership recommended separating the agreements on office space, equipment and IT systems, splitting those from agreements on financial and ethical reporting requirements. The change would compel teams to provide transparency on their transition planning while not requiring their use of government resources or office space. Technology modernization and the changing nature of the workplace are creating further questions around what types of resources transition teams truly need from agencies. “Transition officials still say a physical location supports important collaboration, as well as communication with agency and congressional officials,” the Partnership wrote. “But as demonstrated by the significant transition work done virtually in 2020 and 2024, widespread embrace of hybrid work means that physical space matters less than it once did.” The Partnership suggested eliminating the requirement for GSA-provided office space — which is funded by taxpayers, even if unused — and instead offering some level of funding for transition teams to use their preferred office space. “Many things that we do in government were built up around norms, just ways of doing business that weren’t actually statutory,” Mattingley said. “But once norms are broken, my biggest concern is that it’s really hard to go back to adhering to a norm, unless we put a new statute, rule or some sort of guardrail in place.” “I do think we’re going to have to watch out for how campaigns and candidates think about approaching the transition going forward,” she added.The post Trump’s departure from presidential transition norms highlights need for reform first appeared on Federal News Network.

Approximately 317,000 federal employees left the government this year, while 68,000 joined, according to a Friday blog post from Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor.  The amount of separations is beyond Kupor’s previously shared workforce reduction targets. In August, Kupor told WTOP News that he expected the government to shed 300,000 employees by the end of 2025 — down to a total of 2.1 million employees. Kupor’s post didn’t include specific targets for reduction or hiring in 2026. Along with sharing the workforce levels, Kupor’s blog post provided further implementation details of President Donald Trump’s executive order from Oct. 15, which outlined new federal hiring expectations.  The goals he outlined  reflect the current Trump administration’s emphasis on “maximum efficiency” and adherence to administration priorities within the federal workforce. “We want to make sure the government has the right talent focused on the key priorities of the administration and that we are eliminating wasteful taxpayer expenses in areas that are inefficient, no longer required, or in direct contradiction of administration priorities,” Kupor wrote.  Trump’s executive order last month instructed agencies to create an annual staffing plan for fiscal year 2026 and submit it to OPM and the Office of Management and Budget by Dec. 14.  “In addition to all the things we care about in terms of where are [agencies] investing their resources, there are administration priorities that we’ve asked them to focus on and make sure that they talk to us about, one of which certainly is the merit hiring plan and how they’ll incorporate that in their hiring,” Kupor said Friday in an interview with Federal News Network.  The headcount plans align with the Trump administration’s target that for each person hired into the federal government, four people leave, Kupor wrote. He said the government exceeded that ratio this year with the amounts of new hires and departures.  An OPM spokesperson declined to comment on whether the Trump administration would seek to further reduce headcount in 2026 after already surpassing its goal of 300,000 departures. Kupor emphasized that OPM will not prescribe headcounts to agencies under the new hiring guidelines. He said the headcount plans will instead give OPM a “pan-government view” of hiring needs, allowing OPM to centralize recruitment efforts and shared certification plans.  In a memo to agencies on Nov. 5, Kupor and OMB Director Russell Vought said the staffing plans should also cover agencies’ current workforce and staffing needs, gaps in skills areas and strategies for recruitment, as well as consider opportunities for reorganization or reductions.  Kupor also acknowledged the lack of early-career employees hired into the federal government. “We do have a challenging demographic problem in government where we’re not replenishing the pipeline of new hires of people starting their career at the same rate as we have people who will be retiring over the next five to 10 years,” Kupor told Federal News Network. The federal government has faced an imbalance of early-career employees for several years, and prioritized early-career recruitment and development programs to address it. But earlier this year, the Trump administration cut several of those programs, like the Presidential Management Fellows program and U.S. Digital Corps, and fired tens of thousands of probationary employees, many of whom were young staff members. After submitting initial hiring plans, agencies must submit updates to OPM and OMB on the progress of their plans each quarter, beginning with the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Agencies can also coordinate with OPM and OMB to update their staffing plans. Kupor called on agencies in his post to change “default” patterns in hiring plans by basing them off of historical levels or budget allowances.  In creating the annual headcount plans without these “default” behaviors, Kupor wrote that agency leaders should ask themselves, “[W]hat are the functions my agency performs that are in line with presidential priorities or statutory obligations, how many people do I need to provide that service level, and how does that staffing level compare to our current headcount?” Kupor and Vought directed agency heads to promptly notify OPM of approved new hires.  Other key elements of the new hiring expectations include the creation of strategic hiring committees, adaptation of the merit hiring plan, and reduction of reliance on contractors. Trump’s executive order directed agencies to form strategic hiring committees — made up of senior agency leadership — by Nov. 17.  The committees must approve the creation and filling of vacancies within agencies, and overall ensure that agency hiring aligns with the merit hiring plan, agencies’ annual headcount plans, and “national interest, agency needs, and administration priorities.”  Kupor wrote that the hiring committees must ask the “right” questions of candidates to “[make] sure that highly skilled people are being hired into the agency and [ensure] that they are thinking about a broad set of solutions with efficiency in mind.” The ultimate focus in agency hiring, he wrote, should be on delivering to the American people at the lowest cost — not simply reducing headcount levels. The post 317,000 feds have left the government this year, surpassing OPM’s goal first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Democratic lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating as many federal employees as they should be, as part of a recent spending deal that ended the longest government shutdown. Employees who received reduction in force (RIF) notices before the government shutdown, but were on track to be officially separated from their agencies during the shutdown, say layoff protections included in the Nov. 12 continuing resolution mean they should get their jobs back. Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct 1 and Nov. 12. Agencies told a federal court last week that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees. The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an Executive Agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is leading the push for more RIF rescissions, along with several of his Democratic colleagues. Kaine was one of eight Democratic senators who broke ranks to pass the stopgap spending bill, only after Republicans agreed to include language that would protect federal employees from layoffs at least through Jan. 30, 2026. Kaine and his colleagues backed standalone legislation during the shutdown that would have also barred the Trump administration from moving ahead with its most recent wave of mass layoffs. Kaine, along with Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), told Small Business Agency Administrator Kelly Loeffler that the agency is “unlawfully pursuing reductions in force,” and that dozens of recently laid-off employees the agency hasn’t reinstated “have a right to continue their employment.” Federal News Network first reported last week that SBA told 77 recently laid-off employees this week that they could get their jobs back, but rescinded that offer a day later. An SBA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “has determined that the most recent continuing resolution signed into law does not apply to any RIFs executed by the SBA.” The senators said the continuing resolution — particularly Section 120 of the stopgap bill — placed a moratorium on RIFs involving federal employees, and that the “moratorium is broad, clear and unequivocal.” “Consequently, SBA is without authority to maintain any RIFs that occurred during the lapse in appropriations or to initiate or otherwise carry out any new or previously noticed RIFs,” the senators wrote in a Nov. 20 letter. The senators are directing SBA to reinstate the SBA employees and “return them to working status with full back pay.” The letter gives SBA until this Friday to comply with their request and provide an update to their offices. House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) also sent a letter to SBA, expressing “serious concern” over the agency’s back-and-forth announcements about RIF rescissions. Velázquez told Loeffler that “there was no justification for the change,” and that “you have deliberately sought to harm federal employees, who have dedicated their careers to helping entrepreneurs launch and grow their small businesses.” “The erratic, cruel, and callous manner in which you handled this matter is unacceptable,” she wrote. “The law is clear, and SBA must restore these employees to their positions with back pay, effective immediately.” Recently laid-off employees at the General Services Administration are calling on the agency to rescind their RIF notices, citing language in the recently passed continuing resolution. The American Foreign Service Association is urging the State Department to reverse RIF notices that went out this summer and took effect during the shutdown. Recently RIF-ed Justice Department employees are also seeking reinstatement. A former DOJ employee said about 30 recently laid-off staff from the agency’s Community Relations Service, Office for Access to Justice and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces are also seeking reinstatement. These are all offices DOJ is seeking to eliminate or consolidate, as part of its agency reorganization plans. The recently separated employee, who worked for the Community Relations Service, said it’s clear lawmakers meant to cover as many federal employees as possible in the layoff protections. The Justice Department declined to comment. The former DOJ employee said that about half of those seeking reinstatement have appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The former employee, however, said some have not pursued an MSPB appeal because of the cost. Others are hopeful that a federal lawsuit in Boston challenging the DOJ’s reorganization plans could eventually lead to reinstatement. The lawsuit is challenging the department’s plans to eliminate the Community Relations Service. On Monday, members of the Congressional Equality Caucus wrote that, without CRS, DOJ would be too understaffed to handle a rise in reported hate crimes in the U.S. “With these changes, CRS would be unable to perform its statutorily required functions with just one staff member. The dismantling of CRS is not only unlawful, it is also particularly concerning given the rise in community unrest, where CRS’s peacebuilding and mediation services would play a vital role.”The post Lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating enough laid-off employees under shutdown-ending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

In total, 3,605 federal workers got notice that their jobs were being eliminated during or because of the government shutdown. Each RIF has now been reversed.

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