Agencies are getting more information on how to implement the recently finalized “rule of many.” The federal hiring strategy, several years in the making, aims to create broader pools of qualified job candidates while adding flexibility for federal hiring managers.

A series of guidance documents the Office of Personnel Management published earlier this month outlined the steps agencies should take to begin using the “rule of many” when hiring. OPM’s new resources also detail how the “rule of many” intersects with other aspects of the federal hiring process, such as shared certificates, skills-based assessments and veterans’ preference.

Under the “rule of many,” federal hiring managers score job candidates on their relevant job skills, then rank the candidates based on those scores. From there, hiring managers can choose one of several options — a cut-off number, score or percentage — to pare down the applicant pool and reach a list of qualified finalists to select from.

OPM’s new guidance comes after the agency finalized regulations last September to officially launch the “rule of many.” The concept was initially included in the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, and OPM during the Biden administration proposed regulations on the “rule of many” in 2023.

“Coupled with the use of functional skills assessments … the [rule of many] gives hiring managers the much-needed flexibility to distinguish candidates based on their demonstrated functional merit-based qualifications for the role in question,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote in a Sept. 8 blog post, the same day OPM issued the final rule.

The “rule of many” aligns with some aspects of the Trump administration’s merit hiring plan, OPM said, such as using technical assessments and shared certificates. OPM said the “rule of many” in particular aligns with skills-based hiring, since it can expand candidate pools with applicants who have more fitting skillsets.

The “rule of many” also encourages agencies to use more “comprehensive” assessments, like structured interviews or job simulations, OPM said in its new guidance. And it can “support improved hiring outcomes, particularly for nontraditional candidates, veterans and those with varied career paths,” OPM added.

But for many agencies, the actual adoption of the “rule of many” may be put on the back burner, according to Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service. She said without enough funding or staffing, agencies are not likely to overhaul their current and already well-established hiring practices in the short term.

“The ‘rule of many’ is a good tool, but until those ingredients are all put together, I don’t think that you’ll see it rolled out immediately,” Mattingley said in an interview.

OPM’s finalization of the “rule of many” last September officially ended agencies’ ability to use the past “rule of three” hiring practice. The older candidate assessment technique already had been largely phased out, but previously restricted agencies to only selecting from the top three ranked applicants.

The “rule of many” also differs from most agencies’ current candidate-vetting technique, called “category rating,” which lets federal hiring managers assort job applicants into categories such as “qualified,” “better qualified,” and “best qualified,” then select a candidate for the job from the highest category.

When “category rating” was introduced years ago, it was an improvement over the “rule of three,” but Kupor said “category rating” created other challenges — namely, that all candidates within a single category would be considered equally qualified.

“In other words, the categories are minimum hurdles for consideration, but they don’t distinguish between applicants within a category,” Kupor said in September. “For example, if a score of 80% is the minimum hurdle to qualify into the ‘best qualified’ category, an applicant who scores 100% is treated no differently than one who scores 80%.”

OPM said in its new guidance that the “rule of many” uses the strengths of “category rating,” while adding flexibility to the process. It also allows for “finer distinctions” between candidates and broadens the range of applicants available for selection.

In most cases, OPM said the “rule of many” is preferable over “category rating.” But there are also best use cases for each hiring mechanism. Higher-level positions with more robust assessments will usually require the finer distinctions between candidates that the “rule of many” provides. But for more entry-level positions that don’t require highly technical qualifications, the “category rating” system may be just as effective.

Adopting the “rule of many” will also require a significant cultural shift at agencies, which the Partnership’s Mattingley said can be difficult. Existing strategies like skills-based hiring have not yet been fully adopted at agencies, which may indicate that the uptake of the “rule of many” will also be slow, she explained.

“Until agencies crack the nut on really leveraging skills-based hiring, I don’t think it’s going to be this big change in the immediate future,” Mattingley said. “You need skills-based hiring in order to leverage the rule of many, because you have to be able to make much finer technical assessments on the skills between candidates if you’re going to rank them in the way rule of many does.”

OPM’s “rule of many” guidance comes a few months after President Donald Trump officially lifted the governmentwide hiring freeze. But the White House has emphasized that when hiring, agencies should still focus on maintaining their now-smaller staffing sizes.

“Hiring is still a big question this year,” Mattingley said. “It does look like the administration is going to encourage agencies to hire, except at the same time, agencies are still facing budget uncertainty. They’re facing downward pressure on headcount.”

The post OPM details expectations for the ‘rule of many’ in federal hiring first appeared on Federal News Network.

As he marked one year since being sworn into office, President Donald Trump on Tuesday touted the actions of his administration — including praising the major reductions to the federal workforce throughout 2025.

“I don’t want to cut people, but when you cut them and they go out and get a better job, I like to cut them,” Trump said during a nearly two-hour press briefing, while also stating his administration “slashed tremendous numbers of people off the federal payroll.”

The White House on Tuesday also released a list of “365 wins” over the last year, commending the administration’s efforts to ensure a “merit-based” federal workforce. The list includes federal workforce actions overhauling the probationary period; eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion across government; requiring employees to work on-site full-time; slashing federal jobs; and limiting agencies to one new hire for every four employees who exit the civil service.

“I say, get rid of everybody that’s unnecessary, because that’s the way you make America great again,” Trump said. “When you have all these jobs where people are sitting around doing nothing and they get a lot of money from the government, it’s no good.”

But good government groups such as the Partnership for Public Service tell a much different story of the administration’s impact on the federal workforce. Max Stier, the Partnership’s president and CEO, described 2025 as “the most significant reduction in federal government capacity that we’ve ever experienced in our history.”

“And that reduction in capacity is best represented in our most important asset: our federal workforce,” Stier told reporters on a press call last week.

Governmentwide, federal workforce data shows that about 320,000 federal employees left government during 2025, while just tens of thousands joined the civil service. The Office of Personnel Management reported a net loss of about 220,000 federal employees over the course of the year.

“It tells a disturbing story about who we’ve lost in our government and what is actually happening to the workforce,” Stier said. “But it doesn’t tell you anything about what is truly most fundamental — their morale and what they think about what’s happening right now.”

The Partnership, a non-profit organization that advocates for non-partisan, “good government” reforms, released a report on Tuesday, noting that the Trump administration’s actions over the last year created “confusion, distrust and stress within the federal workforce.”

“There were large-scale layoffs of employees, cuts to government programs and the ending of many grants, altering how the government does — or does not — serve the public and the outcomes it can achieve,” the report states. “Not only did the government lose invaluable expertise, it became less responsive to public needs and less prepared to keep Americans safe.”

“It is impossible to gain a full picture of the layoffs and their impact,” the Partnership added. “The administration has provided few specifics about what positions have been eliminated and which personnel have been laid off or incentivized to resign.”

The Partnership’s report also detailed the specific impacts of federal workforce losses over the last year, including effects at agencies like the IRS, Social Security Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, FEMA and many others.

As a result of the governmentwide staffing cuts, the Partnership argued, agencies are less prepared to deliver disaster assistance during emergencies, and less efficient in administering crucial government programs, leading to delays in basic services and increased wait times.

By contrast, OPM Director Scott Kupor has argued that the Trump administration’s federal workforce overhauls will lead to better employee accountability, merit and performance across government. Kupor also touted the loss of one-third of OPM’s internal workforce during 2025, while saying the agency’s service delivery improved.

“President Trump was clear from day one: The federal workforce must be accountable, performance-driven and focused on serving the American people,” Kupor said in a Dec. 31 press release. “This year, OPM delivered on that vision — modernizing government operations, rewarding excellence and putting taxpayers first.”

But Rob Shriver, director of the Civil Service Strong program at Democracy Forward, questioned the Trump administration’s workforce reductions, saying there are no forward-looking plans for continuing to effectively deliver services after the cuts.

“The singular focus on headcount reduction as a blunt instrument reveals that DOGE was never about efficiency,” Shriver, a former acting director of OPM during the Biden administration, said in commentary on Tuesday. “It was about retribution and stifling dissent by intimidating federal workers into leaving their jobs or, if they decided to stay, intimidating them into not questioning their political leaders.”

At the same time, information on the federal workforce’s perspective over the course of 2025 will likely be limited. After months of postponing, OPM last year opted to cancel the 2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. In an attempt to fill the data gap, the Partnership conducted its own federal workforce survey.

The results of the Partnership’s survey are expected to be released in March. But Partnership officials have said it will still be difficult as an external organization to replicate the depth of data OPM can attain through FEVS.

Going forward, the Trump administration is looking to make further changes for the federal workforce, including overhauls to the probationary period and federal hiring processes, as well as performance management and senior executive development.

OPM’s Kupor said the upcoming changes will make government “leaner,” while making federal employees more results-oriented, accountable and efficient.

But some painted a darker picture for federal employees throughout 2026.

“The harms caused by these cuts have already begun to play out, and we’ll see more and more of that in 2026, when the impacts of the thoughtless workforce cuts are felt more deeply around the country,” Shriver said.

The Trump administration is also expected to soon issue a final rule to implement “Schedule Policy/Career.” The forthcoming regulations will let agencies reclassify career federal employees in “policy-influencing” positions, in effect removing their civil service protections and making them easier to fire at-will.

“The change of our federal government into one that is a loyalist workforce, as opposed to a professional one, is a process that we anticipate moving forward in 2026,” Stier said. “As challenging as 2025 was, I think we can expect even harder days ahead in 2026.”

The post Trump lauds ‘tremendous’ federal workforce cuts. Good government group calls them ‘disturbing.’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Office of Personnel Management extended the deadline to apply for the U.S. Tech Force, due to what it said has been “tremendous interest and a recent surge in applications.”

The Tech Force program initially launched in December, as a way to temporarily hire technologists into government for two-year stints to work on critical tech challenges across agencies. Those interested now have until Feb. 2 to apply for a spot in the program, according to a Thursday social media post. OPM is targeting 1,000 recruits to the program by March.

It’s not clear how many individuals have so far submitted applications to Tech Force. But OPM Director Scott Kupor said more than 35,000 people expressed initial interest in the program.

“We’re working through our funnel now of how many of those people will give us a resume, how many people will do the application,” Kupor said Wednesday during an event hosted by Washington AI Network. “From my perspective, the interest is phenomenal.”

The federal tech recruitment program incorporates skills-based hiring practices by not requiring candidates to have a college degree to apply for the program. It is also targeted in large part toward hiring early-career talent — something the government has struggled with for years.

“If we do nothing, basically, we have a pending problem where we’re going to have a ton of people retiring over the next five or 10 years, and we’ve done absolutely nothing to actually replenish the pipeline,” Kupor said. “So, to us, this is the perfect opportunity. We can fill a talent gap in the technology area, and we can also start to solve what we call the early-career problem in government.”

Early-career staffing in government, however, has declined over the last year due to the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Currently, 7.9% of the federal workforce is under age 30, compared with 8.9% a year ago. In contrast, about 41% of the federal workforce is over age 50, and 13.5% of federal employees are eligible to retire, according to OPM workforce data.

“You saw a disproportionate number of young, tech-savvy federal employees being shown the door,” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told reporters Thursday. “The federal government has had a history of insufficient generationally diverse talent, and that went down even further over the course of the past year.”

Additionally, as part of the more than 320,000 federal employees who left government last year, OPM workforce data shows that agencies lost nearly 13,000 IT managers governmentwide. That includes a net loss of about 4,300 IT managers in the Defense Department, and 1,400 IT managers at the IRS.

But through the Tech Force program, Kupor said his goal of creating more flexibility for technologists to move between jobs in the federal and private sectors may lead to better recruitment of early-career federal employees.

“If you’re an early-career person, you don’t need to make a 40-year decision as to whether you’re going to be in government or be in the private sector,” Kupor said. “I think it would be healthy, both for the government and for the private sector, if we had more people who come in and out … We want to create a fluid career track, particularly for early-career folks.”

Kupor expressed interest in scaling up the initial 1,000-member Tech Force cohort over time. He also discussed the possibility of expanding the federal recruitment program to other fields, such as HR specialists and financial analysts.

To recruit talent for Tech Force, OPM is collaborating with various private sector companies, along with the NobleReach Foundation — a non-profit organization with an existing STEM scholarship program targeted toward public service. The organization is expected to work with OPM to help connect agencies with Tech Force recruits in AI, cybersecurity, data science and more.

“We’re at a transformational time right now — how people think about their careers is going to be very different,” NobleReach CEO Arun Gupta said Wednesday during the Washington AI Network event. “You may decide you want to stay, you may decide to leave, but we celebrate both options. We want them to be ambassadors for understanding what public service is about and stay connected to public service.”

The Tech Force hiring effort is far from the first time the government has created a short-term program seeking to recruit technologists and early-career talent. Initiatives during past administrations have included the U.S. Digital Service, now called the U.S. DOGE Service, as well as the U.S. Digital Corps.

“Some of what we’re seeing right now, frankly, is duplicating stuff that used to exist that no longer does … and we did see an outflow of a lot of tech talent in the federal government,” Stier said. “It is obviously better that they’re now trying to bring more tech talent in, but it’s going to be more difficult given the track record that they’ve had in shutting down preexisting programs that were intended to solve for the same problems.”

Stier also emphasized the importance of integrating the temporary Tech Force employees with the current federal workforce to maximize technological progress in agency programs.

“It is not really possible to achieve significant long-term improvement by trying to strap on some external force that parachutes in for a short period of time,” Stier said. “You really need to invest in the people that are already there, that have deep knowledge not only about the subject matter of the programs, but also about the way government works.”

The post OPM extends Tech Force application deadline, citing ‘tremendous interest’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

After a year of upheaval for federal employees, the Trump administration appears to be only getting started on its plans for overhauling the career civil service.

Further federal workforce changes are expected to continue into 2026 and beyond, according to the goals the administration recently laid out in its President’s Management Agenda.

Many of the priorities, as the Office of Management and Budget outlined, either already have — or soon will — significantly impact federal employees.

Here are three workforce changes from the Trump administration that federal employees should look for in the new year:

Future federal staffing plans

The sheer size of the federal workforce changed considerably over the past year, with executive branch agencies losing a cumulative total of more than 300,000 federal employees, according to numbers from the Office of Personnel Management.

With those staffing cuts in place, agencies are beginning to assemble future-looking plans to further reshape their workforces over the next few years.

As a months-long hiring freeze starts to thaw, the Trump administration has required all agencies to submit annual staffing plans for the coming year, subject to review and approval by OMB and OPM officials. The administration also directed agencies to form strategic hiring committees, composed mainly of political appointees, to oversee all recruitment efforts.

Agencies’ staffing plans must “consider efficiencies” of organizational restructuring and consolidation, removal of “unnecessary management layers,” the elimination of “unnecessary” jobs and contractor positions, managing the performance of underachieving employees — and much more, Trump administration officials explained in November guidance.

Until OMB and OPM approve the staffing plans, agencies will have to stick to a four-to-one ratio of removing to hiring employees, according to the guidance.

An OMB senior official speaking on background recently told Federal News Network that the administration will measure agencies’ progress toward fulfilling the first PMA priority by seeing how they adhere to Trump’s latest executive order on federal hiring. The goal over the next few years is to ensure that while hiring does take place, it’s in a way that maintains the smaller size of the current federal workforce.

“A key part of that will be making sure agencies are putting in place those hiring committees,” the official said. “They’re making very strategic decisions around who they’re hiring and what positions they’re hiring for, so we don’t just inflate the federal government again and overwhelm all the success we’ve had in reductions to date.”

In past administrations, there have been efforts to dramatically downsize the federal workforce — most recently during the Clinton administration in the 1990s. But a recent report from the Federation of American Scientists said those prior efforts had “decidedly mixed results,” and cautioned the Trump administration not to make the same mistakes.

“The cuts came before changes to agency to-do lists that never materialized,” FAS wrote. “It will be important for this administration to learn lessons from the past to avoid some of the long-term damage wrought by the Clinton years, for which agencies are still paying.”

Many experts have also raised concerns of the loss of federal workforce expertise, due to the reductions that have already taken effect. Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, warned that the loss of institutional knowledge will worsen over time.

“The forced exodus of over 212,000 civil servants has created dangerous gaps in food safety inspection, Social Security processing, veterans’ healthcare and disaster response,” Stier told Federal News Network. “This loss of expertise directly harms Americans’ access to critical services and will take decades to repair.”

Going forward, Robert Shea, a former OMB official in the George W. Bush administration, said doing more work with significantly fewer employees is both a challenge, and a possible opportunity.

“Agencies that rely on existing processes will fail. Agencies that rethink how work gets done may actually improve,” Shea told Federal News Network. “The upside of AI and automation only materializes if feds are given the authority, training and political cover to use these tools.”

“Accountability” of federal employees

A focus on “accountability” has been another common theme for the Trump administration’s federal workforce changes — it’s an area of emphasis in the PMA, and likely to strengthen and expand in 2026 and beyond.

Already, “accountability” has appeared as a priority in the administration’s efforts to remove protections for career federal employees in “policy-influencing” positions, make reforms to the Senior Executive Service, and create a new governmentwide recruitment plan.

Heading into 2026, OPM has also estimated that around 50,000 career federal employees will be reclassified as “Schedule Policy/Career,” a move that would make the impacted workers at-will and easier to fire.

The Trump administration touted Schedule Policy/Career as a way to drive “accountability” in the federal workforce, while offering agencies more flexibility. But critics of the policy, formerly known as “Schedule F,” have warned that it will politicize the non-partisan career civil service.

“Ultimately, this ‘trauma’ leads to the federal government’s loss of talent and institutional knowledge, which damages our national security and makes us more vulnerable to bad actors; reduces government accountability to its citizens; and generates even more loss of trust in government,” said Raymond Limon, a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board and career-long federal executive in human capital.

Going forward, the Trump administration’s efforts on expanding these plans are “on track to get more severe,” according to the Partnership’s Stier.

“The expansion of Schedule Policy/Career authority threatens career protections, creates a climate of fear that drives talented professionals to leave government and further diminishes the services received by the public,” Stier told Federal News Network.

All told, the administration’s overhauls will lead to a “collapse of long-standing assumptions about civil service protections,” according to Shea.

“Constraints on removing career employees that were once treated as untouchable have been challenged directly,” Shea said. “Regardless of how courts ultimately rule, the impact will be long lasting.”

In 2026, federal employees are also facing significant changes in the way agencies measure performance, another way that OPM has said it is looking to increase “accountability” of employees.

OPM is looking to change performance management standards for federal employees. OPM Director Scott Kupor argues that “performance culture” in government is broken, and far too many federal employees are rated as high performers at their agencies.

“We have rampant ratings inflation and a lack of accountability for poor performers that fails to meaningfully differentiate between excellence, successful achievement of one’s objectives and poor performance,” Kupor wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post.

In June, OPM outlined plans to end “inflation” in performance ratings, and more strictly delineate between different levels of performance for employees. The changes also call on agencies to swiftly remove poor performers — and not substitute a suspension, for instance, when a full removal is more appropriate.

Forthcoming final regulations are expected to cement the emphasis of “accountability” in the administration’s changes to employee performance evaluations.

The idea of “accountability” also appears in the President’s Management Agenda, as part of a goal of fostering a “merit-based federal workforce.”

“The president’s executive orders and the PMA, together, call for revolutionary change, and together with OPM, we’re delivering,” OMB Deputy Director for Management Eric Ueland said in a Dec. 9 CHCO Council meeting. “The president directed agencies to reform the workforce, to maximize efficiency and productivity … Federal agencies have created meaningful efficiencies, allowing them to laser focus on their statutory duties.”

“Merit-based” workforce reforms

Finally, the Trump administration is calling for a focus on “merit-based” hiring across the federal workforce. It’s a top priority of the administration’s President’s Management Agenda, but also something that has appeared across multiple efforts from OPM.

In May, OPM first issued the administration’s new “merit hiring plan,” setting goals for reducing the government’s time-to-hire, as well as focusing on skills-based recruitment and a streamlined process.

The hiring guidance also required all agencies to assess candidates on USAJobs on how they plan to support the administration’s priorities when applying for open positions.

But in 2026, the goals of the “merit hiring plan,” in combination with the Trump administration’s PMA priority, are expected to take further effect, as agencies move forward with their new annual staffing plans.

“Moving forward, hiring will be based on merit and focused on practical skill, competence and dedication to the Constitution,” OMB’s Ueland said.

Combined, the merit hiring plan, performance changes, and newly required annual staffing plans will significantly reshape the federal workforce going forward.

“For those of you who have been in the private sector, much of this will seem like motherhood and apple pie,” Kupor wrote in a Nov. 21 blog post. “We are now inviting the federal government to join the planning party.”

OPM’s new “Tech Force” recruitment initiative, as an example, will embed the “merit hiring” principles as agencies look to onboard private-sector technologists and early-career talent through the new program.

But some of the hiring changes are common across recent presidential administrations. Recruitment strategies such as skills-based hiring and the use of shared certificates appeared in the Trump administration’s hiring guidance, similar to prior efforts from the Biden administration.

The FAS report noted, “the perennial need to hire federal employees more quickly and efficiently … have appeared in every PMA to date.”

The post 3 efforts federal employees should track from Trump’s management agenda first appeared on Federal News Network.

As a tumultuous year for the federal workforce comes to a close, many employees are in a much different position now than they were at the start of 2025.

The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce staffing across agencies resulted in the loss of more than 317,000 federal employees governmentwide. It’s a 13.7% decrease compared with September 2024 workforce numbers, Office of Personnel Management data shows.

At the same time, 68,000 new federal employees joined the civil service during 2025, according to OPM Director Scott Kupor. Combining both attrition and hiring data, the administration’s changes over the course of 2025 amounted to a net staffing decrease of about 10.8%.

Kupor touted the results as exceeding the administration’s goals, saying relatively few losses were due to reductions in force (RIFs) and firings of probationary employees. Out of all employees who left their jobs in the last year, “over 92% did so voluntarily,” he said, mainly via the deferred resignation program (DRP).

“None of this is to minimize the impact of anyone losing a job, but the ‘mass firing’ headlines do not in fact tell the full story,” Kupor wrote in a Dec. 10 post on X.

But some federal workforce experts argue that the administration’s reductions in 2025 amounted to a “forced exodus.” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, pointed to what he said have become “dangerous gaps” in key federal services, like food safety inspection, Social Security processing, veterans’ healthcare and disaster response.

“This loss of expertise directly harms Americans’ access to critical services and will take decades to repair,” Stier told Federal News Network.

Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) also pushed back against the idea of the administration’s DRP being “voluntary.” He said many feds who left government felt they had no choice — they felt threatened they would be fired anyway, if they did not leave through the DRP.

“Federal workers were hit with DOGE, watched agencies shutter, were threatened with imminent reductions in force, demagogued and bombarded with those mindless ‘5 things’ emails,” Walkinshaw said Dec. 11. “Nothing about that was voluntary — the ‘fork in the road’ was coercion.”

Still, the workforce cuts so far align with the Trump administration’s overall goal to “downsize the federal workforce,” as the Office of Management and Budget recently laid out in the new President’s Management Agenda. Specifically, the administration said it is targeting cuts of “unnecessary positions” and “poor performers,” while emphasizing more efficiency.

“We’ve seen significant success in right-sizing the federal workforce and addressing performance issues,” Eric Ueland, OMB’s deputy director for management, said during a Dec. 9 Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council meeting.

The workforce reductions hit some agencies harder than others. The top three agencies facing staffing reductions are the departments of Defense, Agriculture and Treasury — with Treasury’s reductions mostly concentrated within the IRS, according to research from the Partnership for Public Service.

By scale, DoD has seen the largest staffing reduction across government. The department lost over 61,600 employees during 2025 — a total of about 8% of its total workforce.

Following just behind DoD, the Treasury Department lost more than 31,600 employees, yielding a staffing reduction of nearly 28%.

And at USDA, the loss of more than 21,600 employees over the last year amounted to a roughly 22% staffing decrease overall.

But other agencies, such as USAID and the Education Department, saw even deeper cuts to their workforces, despite being smaller agencies by volume.

Governmentwide, the loss of more than 300,000 federal employees has shown up in a multitude of ways. At the IRS, for instance, an agency watchdog warned there will likely be issues with the 2026 tax filing season, as a direct result of the 25% cut to the IRS workforce. And at USDA, the staffing reductions are affecting the work of some of the department’s underlying agencies.

The Partnership for Public Service said the cuts are harming communities as well. An analysis of more than 530 stories on the federal government throughout 2025 shows the impacts of the federal workforce reductions across the country.

“Notably, more than 45% of these stories involve harms to science-related sectors, including agricultural research, healthcare and public land management,” the Partnership said. “Together, they show the direct, tangible consequences these changes are having on individuals, organizations and communities.”

Over the course of 2025, the impacts also continued to spread. In a survey the Partnership conducted in September, 46% of respondents said they or someone they know had been impacted by the government cuts. That’s up from 29% of respondents who said the same in March.

Still, there are many who view the Trump administration’s changes positively. About 80% of those who are supportive of the federal workforce overhauls said they believe the changes will make their communities and lives better, the Partnership’s September survey found. But even among those who were supportive of the changes, 41% still expressed concerns about a loss of experience and knowledge in the federal workforce in the short term.

The changes are impacting many who have stayed in their jobs as well. Federal employees are experiencing disruptions in the workplace at a rate far higher than the national average, according to a recent Gallup survey.

Close to one-third — about 29% — of federal employees say their workplace has been disrupted “to a very large extent.” That’s nearly triple the 10% of U.S. employees who say the same, Gallup found. Across the federal workforce, it’s leading to increases in stress and loneliness, as well as a decline in employee engagement.

Robert Shea, a federal workforce policy expert and former OMB official from the George W. Bush administration, said the workforce changes have had a “chilling effect” on leaders across the career civil service — something he believes will continue into 2026 and beyond.

“Many career officials are now more cautious about how, when and whether they offer professional advice,” Shea told Federal News Network. “That’s particularly when that advice could be perceived as resistance rather than implementation.”

The post How staffing cuts in 2025 transformed the federal workforce first appeared on Federal News Network.

Federal employees who are looking to join the Senior Executive Service may soon see changes from the Trump administration, as it looks to reform the training programs that are meant to prepare feds for SES positions.

New proposed regulations from the Office of Personnel Management outline the agency’s plans for changing the requirements, timeframe and content of SES “candidate development programs.”

If implemented, federal employees interested in joining the SES would see a shorter timeline for completing the development program, more rigorous requirements to fulfill, and more consistency in the training content — regardless of which agency they work for.

Overall, OPM stated the agency is looking to drive a “shift in the culture of the SES” through the proposed changes, while also emphasizing the role of SES members in executing the Trump administration’s policy agenda.

“By increasing program standards and training requirements, an SES [candidate development program] will better equip program participants to excel in senior leadership roles and effectively implement the president’s agenda,” the Dec. 18 proposed rule noted.

Candidate development programs generally help prepare career federal employees for roles in the SES. But currently, the programs are inconsistent across government, according to OPM. Different agencies set different training requirements for potential SES members. Some agencies simply don’t have an SES candidate development program to begin with.

“Inconsistencies … have yielded mixed results across participating agencies,” OPM officials wrote. “That variability has resulted in different training and development experiences … and leads to some programs that are more effective than others in preparing their leaders.”

Specifically, OPM is proposing to create a standardized and governmentwide version of the SES candidate development program. By using a consistent training template, OPM said the program will be more streamlined and lead to consistent metrics that can be compared across agencies and over time.

On top of standardizing and revising the content of SES candidate development programs, OPM also proposed shortening the timeline for participants to complete the program. The plan is to bring the timeframe down to 9-12 months in most cases, rather than the 1-2 years candidates currently get to complete the program.

“This length of time involves considerable expense and resources to ostensibly turn ‘almost ready’ talent into ‘ready now’ talent,” OPM wrote. “Decreasing the program cohort duration allows for a more expedited timeline of identifying near ready talent and preparing them fully to fill SES vacancies.”

Along with shortening the timeframe, OPM is also looking to increase the required training hours in the development program, from 80 hours up to 100 hours. Candidates would also have to complete at least 10 hours of “coaching and mentoring,” as well as at least one “developmental assignment” lasting about four months.

OPM said the added requirements would “enhance and broaden the candidate’s experience, increase his or her knowledge, and maximize his or her understanding of the overall functioning of the agency, so the candidate is prepared for a range of agency positions at the SES level.”

Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, said she generally sees OPM’s increased focus on the SES candidate development programs as a positive change. Although there have been discussions for more than a decade on possible reforms to the programs, she said over time, not many changes have moved forward.

“Anything that starts thinking about how to make the programs more consistent, more robust, and how to ensure you’re getting qualified folks into the Senior Executive Service — that’s a good focus,” Mattingley said in an interview with Federal News Network. “But it will still take a while just see that play out. Agencies are going to have to re-evaluate their programs make them fit with OPM’s standards — and then actually send people through it.”

Currently, SES candidate development programs are largely inconsistent, both within and across agencies, Mattingley said. Some employees who join the SES have completed a development program, but many simply apply for a senior-level position without any further training. At the same time, some employees who complete a candidate development program may not end up joining the SES.

Mattingley said it will be important to track how much agencies ultimately invest in their training and development programs. That includes investments in developing entry-level employees at the start of the leadership pipeline, she added.

“This is not a new idea,” Mattingley said. “People have been trying to reform the SES for many years, but agencies didn’t implement it in the way or at the scale that I think people hoped that would happen.”

In its new proposal, OPM said development programs are a “crucial” tool for agencies, as they assemble succession management in their workforces and prepare “high-potential” employees for the SES.

“These programs aim to cultivate leaders equipped with a governmentwide perspective and the competencies necessary to tackle complex challenges,” OPM wrote. “Through the introduction of more stringent … certification requirements, OPM aims to enhance training and development for aspiring SES and accelerate the placement of well-prepared leaders to ensure leadership continuity.”

OPM’s new regulations build on initial guidance from May, which told agencies to begin changing how they hire and develop SES candidates. That same guidance also directed agencies to update their SES candidate development programs to align with “new administration priorities.”

Many of the changes for the SES also come in response to an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office, calling for restored “accountability” in the SES.

The proposed regulations are open to public comments until Feb. 17. OPM is looking for feedback in particular on additional research it should consider, if there should prescribe time requirements for specific topic areas, the benefits of expanding assessments in the development program, and where there have been similar “promising practices” in the private sector.

Marcus Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association, expressed support for efforts to improve consistency and rigor in the training standards, but cautioned that SES candidate development programs should remain non-partisan and be able to transcend presidential administrations.

“SES candidate development programs play a vital role in preparing leaders who can serve any administration with professionalism, integrity and readiness,” Hill said. “We encourage OPM to implement these changes in a way that preserves agency flexibility, avoids unnecessary administrative burden and ensures that high-quality leadership development is accessible across the federal government, including at smaller and resource-constrained agencies.”

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