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The Trump administration is laying out sweeping exceptions to its governmentwide hiring freeze, likely bringing down the number of impacted positions to less than half of those in government.
The Defense Department is so far exempting all of its civilian positions from the freeze, according to multiple sources, allowing hiring for roughly 750,000 roles to continue. President Trump signed an executive order instituting the freeze on Monday shortly after his inauguration, but allowed for exceptions for positions related to immigration enforcement, national security or public safety.
Those exemptions, as well as the carve outs for positions related to distribution of benefits to veterans, Medicare recipients and Social Security recipients, will allow large swaths of the federal government to continue hiring. In guidance on the freeze, the Office of Personnel Management, Matthew Vaeth and Charles Ezell, the acting directors of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, respectively, informed agency heads they could exempt any position tied to “essential activities” that protect life and property similar to those exempted during government shutdowns. In recent shutdown plans during the Biden administration, agencies planned to require about 1.4 million, or 66%, federal employees to stay on the job during a funding lapse.
In 2017 after Trump issued his freeze, Defense issued widespread exemptions but did freeze hiring in some areas. A department official declined to weigh in on its approach this time around.
“The Department of Defense will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the executive orders issued by the president, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives,” the official said. “We will provide status updates as we are able.”
A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department declined to comment on whether they would exempt their entire workforces, though employees within some parts of DHS—such as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services—said either that their offices would be impacted or that they had not yet heard anything. The language of Trump’s order suggests Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, either in whole or in part, would be exempt in order to carry out Trump’s immigration and border security crackdown.
One DHS employee said he was in the middle of the hiring process for a staffer and he was told to continue the process for now, even if he does not expect it to go through.
“I’ll make my selection and if it is subject to the freeze, nothing will happen with it and I’ll have to hope my selection doesn’t move on to a private sector job,” the employee said.
The Veterans Affairs Department appears poised to exempt employees at the Veterans Benefits Administration, but Trump’s pick to lead VA, Doug Collins, told lawmakers yesterday he may freeze hiring for some health care staff. Collins told Democratic senators concerned about the impact of a freeze they were falsely assuming that a vacancy equated to an actual need for the department.
“We’ll take a look at the current levels of employees that we have and where they’re properly located,” Collins said. “We will work under the executive order he has given us.”
The administration will allow incoming employees with job offers in hand prior to Jan. 20 to onboard into their jobs if their start date was scheduled for on or before Feb. 8. Anyone whose start date was slated for after Feb. 8 will see that offer rescinded. Agency heads should have already formally rescinded those offers, but can now request special permission from OPM to reinstate them.
Positions that are still vacant must have any job postings taken down and any correspondence with prospective applicants must cease, OPM and OMB said. Agencies can still hire for seasonal employees, certain internships and fellowship programs, for internal career ladder promotions and when not doing so would conflict with applicable law.
Exemptions must be approved in writing by Amanda Scales, the new chief of staff at OPM. Scales came into government as an appointee after previously working at Elon Musk’s xAI. Scales has been listed as the point of contact for all of OPM’s guidance since Trump took office, including for lists that will lead to layoffs of employees working in diversity offices and a compiling of all recent hires who are still in their probationary periods and therefore easy to fire en masse.
Despite the broad carve outs, the order is still likely to have significant impacts on agencies and potentially pronounced fallout to their missions. In some cases after Trump’s hiring freeze to start his previous term, it took some agencies years to recover from the backlog of vacancies. Most agency leaders ended the administration suggesting they were trying to rebuild their workforces, though virtually all of them wound up with fewer employees at the end of his term.
Trump’s freeze this time around is set to expire after 90 days, though agencies will first have to submit plans—in consultation with OMB and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—to permanently reduce their rolls through efficiencies and attrition. The Internal Revenue Service will face a longer freeze, per Trump’s order.
Defense One’s Lauren Williams contributed to this report.
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