Federal Hiring After the Cuts: Strategic Hiring Committees, a One-for-Four Rule and 8,000 Jobs Moved to Schedule Policy-Career

In August 2026 the federal government employed 2.674 million people on Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll figures, down 336,000 from 3.010 million in January 2025. GAO counted about 378,000 departures from 22 large agencies in 2025 against about 127,000 hires.

The government is hiring again, slowly, and under rules that look nothing like the old system. OPM’s own data, as of 10 October, show job announcements up 7.6% in fiscal 2026 on the year before, with 12,511 positions open.

From a freeze to committees

A hiring freeze began on the first day of the new administration, 20 January 2025. It was extended to July, then to 15 October 2025. On that date an executive order replaced the blanket freeze with something more permanent. Each agency had to set up a strategic hiring committee within 30 days to approve every vacancy, and submit an annual staffing plan within 60.

The implementing guidance set a rule of thumb: until an agency’s plan was approved, it could make one hire for every four people who left. National security, immigration and public safety jobs were exempt. A hiring-industry tracker reported the one-for-four framework still in effect in August 2026.

So hiring now needs a political sign-off for each post. That’s a large change for a civil service where, for decades, managers filled vacancies within their budgets.

Targeted surges

Within that system, some agencies are rebuilding fast. The IRS, which lost about 27% of its roughly 100,000 staff by the end of 2025, got direct-hire authority for about 8,000 positions through September 2026. HHS, which cut about 20,000 people in 2025, told the Senate in April it was hiring 12,000.

The pattern suggests some of the 2025 cuts went further than agencies could sustain. Tax collection and public health are hard to run short-staffed, and both have measurable costs when they fall behind.

What applicants face

Applications changed too. Since OPM’s Merit Hiring Plan of May 2025, applicants for jobs at GS-5 and above get four short essay questions: on the Constitution, on ideas to make government more efficient, on how they would advance the President’s executive orders, and on their work ethic. OPM says applicants may decline to answer without being disqualified. Federal unions are challenging the question about the President’s orders in a Massachusetts federal court, and no ruling had been made by late April 2026.

Schedule Policy/Career

The biggest structural change is to job protections. OPM finalised the Schedule Policy/Career rule in February 2026. It removes appeal rights against dismissal for career employees in policy-influencing roles, while barring patronage, loyalty tests and use of the schedule to get around formal layoff rules. A June 2026 executive order moved about 8,000 positions into it, mostly at the most senior grades. That’s far fewer than the roughly 50,000 first expected. It’s being challenged in two federal courts.

How it compares

Britain is trying to cut its civil service through budgets and attrition and has barely moved headcount. The US cut first and is now controlling rehiring post by post. Most parliamentary democracies sit between the two, with independent civil service commissions that keep ministers out of individual hiring decisions.

The US system has always had more political appointees than its peers, about 4,000. Schedule Policy/Career adds a second layer: career staff who can be removed more easily. Combined with committee approval of every hire, it gives political leadership much more control over the federal workforce than it had in 2024. Whether that makes government more responsive or less capable is the argument the next few years will settle.