On January 20, President Trump issued a memorandum ordering a 90-day freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees.
Breaking down the memorandum:
- No position vacant as of Monday, January 20 at noon can be filled.
- Incoming employees with job offers in hand prior to January 20 will be allowed to onboard into their jobs if their start date was scheduled for on or before February 8. Those with start dates after February 8 will see their offer rescinded.
- Agency heads should have already formally rescinded those offers, but certain agencies can now request special permission from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to reinstate them.
- The hiring freeze will impact employees across the executive branch.
- The hiring freeze does not apply to:
- Military personnel of the armed forces.
- Positions related to “immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
- The nomination and appointment of officials to positions requiring Presidential appointment or Senate confirmation.
- The appointment of officials to non-career positions in the Senior Executive Service or to Schedule A or C positions in the Excepted Service.
- The appointment of officials through temporary organization hiring authority pursuant to section 3161 of Title 5, United States Code.
- The appointment of any other non-career employees or officials if approved by agency leadership appointed by the President.
- By the end of the 90-day period, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in consultation with the Director of OPM and the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service (USDS), is expected to submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal government’s workforce through “efficiency improvements and attrition.”
- Once the OMB submits its plan, the hiring freeze will expire for all executive departments and agencies, except the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
- The hiring freeze will continue to apply to the IRS until the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Director of OMB and the Administrator of USDS, determines that “it is in the national interest to lift the freeze.”
- The memorandum prohibits using federal contractors to circumvent the freeze.
- The memorandum claims the hiring freeze will not adversely impact the provision of Social Security, Medicare, or Veterans’ benefits.
- The Director of OPM may grant exemptions from this freeze “where those exemptions are otherwise necessary.”
The hiring freeze was implemented in the spirit of DOGE, which claims to be about efficiency; however, the freeze will lead to greater inefficiency:
- In 1982, the Government Accountability Office published a report analyzing the hiring freezes implemented by Presidents Reagan and Carter. They found that the hiring freezes were ineffective in managing federal employment, disrupted agency operations, and in some cases, increased costs to the government.
- After the 2017 hiring freeze, the vast majority of executive branch agencies saw a drop in their workforce. Nearly all agencies had a smaller workforce by the time Trump left office compared to just before Trump took office.
- Before the 2017 freeze, agencies like the Social Security Administration (SSA) were already struggling with work overload. In May 2016, it took 526 days, on average, for the SSA to process an appeal for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). At the time, 1.1 million people were waiting for a decision on their eligibility for benefits that would financially support people who paid into the system and have been unable to work for at least a year. Trump’s 2017 hiring freeze likely worsened the backlog.
- One of the judges tasked with considering claims from Americans whose initial requests for SSDI benefits have been denied by state agencies correctly pointed out, “There may be a hiring freeze on federal employment, but there’s no freeze on people getting older, people getting sicker, people having injuries and accidents, and people needing disability insurance.”
The hiring freeze will also make life worse for the American public:
- Revolving Door Project’s Dylan Gyauch-Lewis outlines how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for just about every facet of all civilian aviation. The agency’s “purview includes managing air traffic control across all United States airports, certifying new aircraft[s], overseeing routine safety inspections, the licensing of pilots and mechanics, rulemaking, investigation into airlines and plane manufacturers, and enforcement actions.” Understaffing the FAA puts millions of air travelers at risk and could result in tragedies like the deadly crash which occurred at an understaffed Washington D.C. airport last week.
- Understaffing at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will result in fewer inspections of pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical research, which an auditor warned is leading to less informed approvals for drugs people consume every day.
- An understaffed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cannot adequately coordinate disaster relief efforts, leaving people at the whim of climate disasters fueled by corporate greed.
- Without sufficient staff, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) (which is under Trump’s hiring freeze until further notice) won’t be able to handle the upcoming tax season and responsibly enforce complex tax laws. That lack of capacity will make unwinding byzantine tax evasion schemes from some corporations and some rich people more difficult, increasing their take up and decreasing government revenue.
- As the Revolving Door Project’s Toni Aguilar Rosenthal wrote in 2022: “Understaffing [at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)] has also slowed the distribution of 24,000 rental vouchers earmarked for homeless veterans, left rural and small town communities struggling to spend pandemic-related housing assistance (in part due to a lack of federal guidance), and rubber-stamped building inspections despite unsafe and unclean building conditions.”
- Insufficient staffing at the Department of Energy (DOE) prevents the agency from reviewing regulations, proposing new ones, and actually enforcing those regulations. DOE regulations for light bulbs or gas stoves, for example, reduce pollutants that are harmful to environmental and public health.
- Despite the 2017 freeze, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was allowed to continue hiring doctors and nurses but froze onboarding of new support and administrative staff. Although the 2025 memorandum claimed the freeze would not affect veterans’ benefits, doctors and nurses were getting VA job offers rescinded within 24 hours of the order. This will exacerbate existing staff shortages and might push patients into the private system, which is more expensive and provides worse care for people with specialized needs.
How the hiring freeze helps corporations:
- American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox Sr. said, “President Trump’s federal hiring freeze will result in more government waste as agencies are forced to hire high-priced contractors to do the work that federal employees can and should be doing.” The privatization of tasks that can be done by government employees ultimately helps private-sector corporations boost profits.
- Understaffing executive branch agencies like the Justice Department and the FDA undermines their ability to protect workers and the public at large from corporate misconduct. For example, due to capacity issues, calls for regulatory action to be taken when pharmaceutical companies are out of compliance are being ignored and downgraded 60% of the time.
- Well-funded, well-staffed agencies enforce longstanding laws on our books to protect the public from corporate wrongdoing. Freezing hiring at already understaffed federal agencies frees corporations and uber-wealthy individuals to break the law with little fear of repercussions.
One key difference between Trump’s 2017 and 2025 hiring freezes:
- USDS was added to the process of submitting plans to permanently cut the government’s workforce, underscoring the extent of Elon Musk’s involvement and importance in Trump’s second term.
| Hiring freeze during Trump’s first term (2017) | Hiring freeze during Trump’s second term (2025) |
| “Within 90 days of the date of this memorandum, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in consultation with the Director of OPM, shall recommend a long-term plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through attrition. This order shall expire upon implementation of the OMB plan.” In the end, most agencies never submitted plans to permanently slash their workforce and the White House denied ever asking for said plans. | Before the 90 days are up, agencies, in consultation with the OMB director, OPM director and the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service (USDS), have to submit plans to permanently reduce their workforce “through efficiency improvements and attrition.” |
“President Trump Signs H.R. 133” in 2020 by Shealah Craighead (Official White House Photo) is licensed under PDM 1.0.