--- title: "The Agency That Hires the Federal Workforce Lost a Third…" canonical: "https://www.metaintro.com/blog/agency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff" language: "en" author: "drashtigarach" published: "2026-07-24T20:05:36.000Z" modified: "2026-10-02T19:43:34.927Z" --- [Back to Blog](/blog) [News](/blog/tag/news)[Government Jobs](/blog/tag/government-jobs)[Jobs](/blog/tag/jobs)[Layoffs](/blog/tag/layoffs)[Career](/blog/tag/career) # The Agency That Hires the Federal Workforce Lost a Third of Its Own Staff GAO found OPM lost more than 1,000 workers, 35% of staff, in just over a year. What thinner federal HR capacity means if you are applying for a federal job. [![Drashti Garach](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:40:40/q:72/plain/images/5719d740-e510-42bc-8017-e040d145f35f_1766029465094.png)Drashti Garach @DrashtiGarach](/blog/author/drashtigarach) [July 24, 2026](/blog/archive/2026/07)12 min read ![The Agency That Hires the Federal Workforce Lost a Third of Its Own Staff](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:1200:675/q:78/plain/images/agency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff-hero.png) [https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Agency%20That%20Hires%20the%20Federal%20Workforce%20Lost%20a%20Third%20of%20Its%20Own%20Staff&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Agency%20That%20Hires%20the%20Federal%20Workforce%20Lost%20a%20Third%20of%20Its%20Own%20Staff&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff)[http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff)[https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff&title=The%20Agency%20That%20Hires%20the%20Federal%20Workforce%20Lost%20a%20Third%20of%20Its%20Own%20Staff](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff&title=The%20Agency%20That%20Hires%20the%20Federal%20Workforce%20Lost%20a%20Third%20of%20Its%20Own%20Staff)[mailto:?subject=The%20Agency%20That%20Hires%20the%20Federal%20Workforce%20Lost%20a%20Third%20of%20Its%20Own%20Staff&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff](mailto:?subject=The%20Agency%20That%20Hires%20the%20Federal%20Workforce%20Lost%20a%20Third%20of%20Its%20Own%20Staff&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fagency-that-hires-federal-workforce-lost-a-third-of-its-staff) The federal government's main HR office lost [more than 1,000](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) workers, or [35%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) of its staff, in just over a year, according to a new analysis by the [Government Accountability Office](https://www.gao.gov/) reported by [HR Dive](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/). The agency in question is the [Office of Personnel Management](https://www.opm.gov/), which sets policy and provides shared services for federal hiring. At [Metaintro](https://www.metaintro.com), we track roughly 50 million job postings, and the federal pipeline is one where process capacity matters more than in almost any other sector. If you are applying for a federal role, this is a story about how long things take and how carefully you need to document them, not a story about whether the jobs exist. ## What Did the GAO Report Actually Find? The headline finding is a staffing reduction of [more than 1,000](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) people, amounting to [35%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) of OPM's staff in just over a year. The measurement window ran between Dec. 31, 2024 and March 31, 2026. How people left matters as much as how many. Of those who departed, [59%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) did so through the government's deferred resignation program and [10%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) through a reduction in force. That split is important and widely misreported. The majority of this reduction was people accepting an exit offer, not people being made redundant against their will. GAO's assessment of the effect was direct. The losses "have reduced institutional knowledge and operational capacity at the agency". GAO added that they risk worsening skills gaps it had previously recommended OPM address. There is also a transparency finding that deserves attention. GAO said OPM did not provide requested documentation on changes made to offices and programs, the reasoning behind office closures or consolidations, or processes for strategic workforce planning. As a result, GAO said it "is unable to provide complete information on what changes OPM made, its rationale, the expected costs and benefits". When a watchdog says it cannot fully assess something, treat public timelines with corresponding caution. ## Why Does OPM Staffing Affect Your Job Application? Because OPM is infrastructure rather than a single employer. It sets policy and runs shared services that individual agencies rely on, so its capacity shapes how quickly hiring actions move across the government. Federal hiring is already a documentation-heavy process with multiple sequential steps, and each step depends on people with specialised knowledge of classification, veterans preference, suitability and pay setting. That is precisely the "institutional knowledge" GAO identified as reduced. Specialised process knowledge is slow to rebuild, because it lives in experienced staff rather than in written procedure. One specific cut illustrates the point. Part of the changes involved cutting functions described as "no longer affordable", including a team focused on executive and leadership training for federal employees. Whatever the merits of that decision, the capability does not transfer elsewhere automatically. The internal redistribution matters too. The Merit System Accountability & Compliance office saw a [41%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) drop in full-time workers from FY2024 to FY2026, while OPM proposed transferring appeals of employees separated by a reduction in force from the [Merit Systems Protection Board](https://www.mspb.gov/) to OPM, stating the change is meant to improve efficiency. Fewer staff receiving more responsibility is a throughput risk regardless of intent. ## Is the Government Trying to Fix This With Technology? Partly. OPM suggested using artificial intelligence and modernizing its IT systems in offices with fewer staff. That is a reasonable response to reduced headcount, and it is the same substitution many large private employers are attempting. It is also slower to deliver than it sounds. Automating a workflow requires the process to be well documented first, and process documentation is exactly what tends to degrade when experienced staff leave. The context makes this harder still. GAO and OPM have identified skills gaps as a longstanding challenge, and federal efforts to address government-wide and agency-specific skills gaps have been on GAO's High-Risk List [since 2001](https://www.gao.gov/high-risk-list). A problem that has persisted on a watchdog's high-risk list for more than two decades is structural, not a scheduling issue, and technology adoption does not resolve it quickly. For applicants, the practical translation is straightforward. Assume improvements will arrive later than announced, and plan your search timeline around current performance rather than promised performance. ## What Is the Official Position on the Reductions? OPM has been consistent that this is deliberate design rather than decline. In July 2025, Director Scott Kupor published a post titled Right-Sizing with Purpose. In it he said the reductions were part of efforts "to put the U.S. government on a more sustainable fiscal path". "OPM is committed to becoming operationally efficient, by design," Kupor wrote. He described the goal as "a leaner, more agile OPM" focused on outcomes and taxpayer value. Asked about the agency's ability to carry out its work with reduced staff, Kupor said OPM "has done more to modernize services, strengthen accountability in the federal workforce, and implement important reforms in 18 months than some administrations did in eight years". The origin of the largest departure channel is also documented. OPM issued a "Fork in the Road" memo on Jan. 28, 2025 offering deferred resignations to federal employees, and an OPM spokesperson confirmed at the time that the expectation was for [5% to 10%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) of federal employees to accept. You do not need to adjudicate between GAO's assessment and OPM's for this to be actionable. Both descriptions are compatible with the same operational reality, which is fewer experienced people handling the same volume of work during a transition period. ## What Does Reduced Capacity Look Like in Practice? Capacity problems in a hiring system rarely announce themselves as a shortage. They show up as time, and specifically as time between stages rather than time within them. The pattern is predictable. Postings still appear on schedule because posting is largely automated. The delay accumulates afterwards, in the human steps, where applications are reviewed against qualification standards, referral lists are issued, suitability is assessed and offers are finalised. Each of those steps depends on someone who knows the rules, and GAO's concern was precisely about reduced institutional knowledge. A second effect is inconsistency. When experienced staff leave, remaining decisions get distributed among people with varying depth of experience, and the variance in outcomes widens. Two similar applications can be handled differently, not through unfairness but through uneven familiarity with edge cases. For an applicant this means that a rejection on technical grounds is more worth querying politely than it might have been previously. A third effect is communication. Status updates are usually the first thing to go when a team is stretched, because they are the least urgent task on any given day. Silence in that context is genuinely ambiguous rather than meaningful, and reading rejection into a delay is a common and costly mistake. The compounding factor here is that the reduction and the workload arrived together. A transition period between administrations generates elevated volume in exactly the areas OPM administers, at the same moment its own staffing fell by [35%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/). Reduced supply meeting elevated demand is the mechanism, and it resolves slowly. ## Does This Change Whether Federal Work Is Worth Pursuing? For most people, no, though it should change how you sequence it. Federal roles retain the features that draw people to them, including structured pay bands, defined advancement, and benefits that private employers increasingly treat as variable. None of those are affected by the administrative capacity of the agency that processes hiring. What changes is the cost of treating a federal application as your primary plan. When timelines lengthen and communication thins, an applicant who has paused their wider search carries all of the risk of that delay personally. The rational response is to run the federal application as one track among several rather than to wait on it. It is also worth separating the different populations affected by this report. A current federal employee faces questions about internal mobility and appeals processes. A prospective applicant faces questions about timelines and documentation. A contractor faces questions about award cycles. Those are genuinely different situations, and general commentary about federal workforce reductions tends to blur them into a single narrative that fits none of them well. The final point is temporal. Staffing reductions of this kind are not permanent states, and capacity can be rebuilt, particularly where automation is being pursued deliberately. The reasonable planning horizon is the next twelve to eighteen months rather than a structural judgement about federal employment. Adjust your timelines, tighten your documentation, and keep the option open. ## How Should Federal Job Seekers Adjust Right Now? Apply earlier and expect longer gaps. If capacity is genuinely reduced, the effect appears as elapsed time between stages rather than as fewer postings. Treat federal applications as a parallel track running months longer than a private-sector search, not as a substitute for one. Document everything in writing. Keep copies of every submission, confirmation number, and piece of correspondence, with dates. When institutional knowledge thins, the applicant who can produce a clean record of what was submitted and when has a meaningful advantage in resolving any discrepancy. Follow up in writing on a schedule rather than continuously. Polite, dated, specific follow-ups create a paper trail and are far more effective than repeated calls into an office operating with fewer staff. Get your eligibility documentation right the first time. Federal applications fail on technical grounds far more often than on merit, and rework is where delay compounds. Ensure your resume carries the detail federal reviewers require, including hours per week, month and year ranges, and explicit evidence against each listed qualification. A private-sector resume submitted unchanged is the single most common avoidable rejection. If you are already a federal employee, note the appeals change. OPM proposed moving reduction-in-force appeals from the Merit Systems Protection Board to OPM itself. Understand the current route for your own situation rather than relying on what colleagues remember from previous years, because that process is actively being revised. Consider adjacent routes into public service as well. Federal work is not the only way to do it, and state agencies, municipal governments, public universities and federally funded research bodies run their own hiring processes entirely independent of OPM capacity. If public service is the actual goal rather than federal employment specifically, those routes are unaffected by this report and often move considerably faster. Build your network inside the agency you are targeting rather than around the process. When a system is under strain, the informal channel through which a hiring manager learns you exist becomes disproportionately valuable. Informational conversations with people doing the work you want are not a shortcut around merit rules, they are how you learn which announcements are genuinely open, which are being reposted, and how a specific office describes the qualifications it actually needs. Watch for reposted announcements too. A vacancy that closes and reappears weeks later usually indicates something went wrong in the process rather than a change in the role, and a second posting is often a better application opportunity than the first because the pool is smaller and the requirements have usually been clarified. Finally, keep perspective on what this finding is and is not. It describes the capacity of the agency that administers federal hiring, not the availability of federal work. Roles continue to be posted, and agencies continue to hire. The realistic adjustment is patience plus precision, not withdrawal from the federal market. --- ## Related Articles - [How to Write a Federal Resume That Passes Review](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/federal-resume) - [The Economic Impact of Federal Layoffs](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/economic-impact-federal-layoffs) - [Social Security Is Hiring 1,000 Frontline Workers](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/social-security-hiring-1000-frontline-workers-2026) - [How Long Hiring Managers Actually Look at Your Resume](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/how-long-hiring-managers-look-at-resume) - [CISA Job Cuts and the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/cisa-job-cuts-workforce-cybersecurity-federal-workers-2026) - [Alexandria Federal Job Fair](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/alexandria-federal-job-fair) - [Why AI Engineers Are in Demand in the Public Sector](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/why-ai-engineers-in-demand-public-sector-2026) - [A 90 Day Plan to Build AI Skills](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/90-day-plan-to-build-ai-skills) - [How to Job Search With AI After a Layoff](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/job-search-with-ai-after-a-layoff) - [ATS Optimization and Resume Keywords](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-skills-employers-actually-want) - [Career Development When Your Employer Is Restructuring](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/2026-tech-layoffs-companies-cited-ai-tracker) --- ## People Also Asked ### Q: How many staff did OPM lose? A: GAO found OPM lost [more than 1,000](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) workers, about [35%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) of its staff, in just over a year. Of those departures, [59%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) came through the deferred resignation program and [10%](https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-hr-office-lost-more-than-a-third-of-its-workforce-during-trumps-second-term-gao/825907/) through a reduction in force. ### Q: Does this mean federal jobs are being cut? A: No. The finding concerns staffing at the agency that administers federal HR policy and shared services, not the number of federal roles available. The practical effect for applicants is process capacity, which GAO described as reduced operational capacity, rather than fewer openings. ### Q: Will federal hiring take longer now? A: Plan as though it will. GAO said the losses reduced institutional knowledge and operational capacity, and OPM is proposing to offset this with artificial intelligence and IT modernization, which takes time to deliver. Apply early, keep dated records of every submission, and follow up in writing. Looking for your next opportunity? [Metaintro](https://www.metaintro.com) shows you which employers are actively hiring for your skills right now, so a long federal timeline never has to be your only option in play. 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