The Trump administration has significantly reshaped the federal workforce, installing political appointees at an unprecedented pace while sharply reducing the ranks of career senior leadership, according to a new report.
In the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump rapidly filled agencies with non-Senate-confirmed political appointees, the report from the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service revealed.
As of the end of January, 1,835 Schedule C non-confirmed political appointees were serving across the government – a level “no other modern president approached until well into their administration,” the report said.
That total represents the federal government’s largest political workforce in at least 40 years.
At the same time, the government’s career Senior Executive Service (SES) leadership fell 30%, in what the partnership called “one of the sharpest collapses in career leadership on record.”
Together, the two trends “mark a striking shift in who leads the federal government and how agencies are run,” said the report, which is titled “The Politicization of Federal Leadership: Record Non-Senate Confirmed Presidential Appointments and the Hollowing Out of Career Leadership.”
The workforce changes violate the traditions and norms of federal leadership that have been built up across decades, the partnership contends.
“Traditionally, presidents have relied on career civil servants as the backbone of the government’s workforce due to their consistency across elections, experience and expertise,” the report said. “Trump is turning this norm on its head – shrinking the ranks of career leadership while expanding the layer of political appointees at the top of agencies.”
With increased presidential control over agencies, the report said, the risks of mismanagement, diminished organizational capacity, and a decline in the quality of government programs and services are higher, the report said. It cited research showing that “programs led by political appointees perform worse than those managed by career officials.”
The administration’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce were already widely known: A recent Pew Research Center report found that a total of 348,219 people quit, retired, were laid off, or otherwise left federal employment last year, shrinking the federal workforce by 10.3%.
Those departures hit the SES – career senior managers with deep expertise – especially hard. According to the partnership report, resignations, retirements, and terminations drove the number of career SES officials from 8,127 at the end of the Biden administration to 5,837 as of January, a record low since at least 1998.
The administration has also made clear its intent to expand political influence within federal agencies. In March 2025, for example, it directed them to revise the designation of chief human capital officer (CHCO) roles so that political appointees could fill the positions.
But the partnership report traces the effort at politicization in precise detail. The 1,835 Schedule C nonconfirmed political appointees serving at the end of January, for example, are over 50 more than the previous record set under President George H.W. Bush (1,783) and nearly 200 more than the high-water mark of Trump’s first term (1,642).
The current situation points to a need for reform, said the partnership, which suggests changes such as an overall cap on Schedule C political appointments set by Congress, changes in the non-career SES limit, and greater transparency so the public and Congress can better oversee political appointees.
Even so, the report warns that the administration has moved to create new categories of political appointments and at-will employees “that could push these trends further.”
They include Schedule Policy/Career, a new classification expected to strip civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees in policy-influencing roles.