Last Updated: September 9, 2026 Reading Time: 9 min

The federal workforce replacement gap has a number now, and it is brutal. In September 2025, the peak month for deferred resignations, 8,218 management analysts left the government. Agencies hired 106. That is a 1% replacement rate for a job series that was hiring above replacement just one year earlier.

The Replacement Scorecard: Who Left, Who Got Hired

GovExec published the occupation-level analysis on July 13, built on public OPM separations and accessions data. The pattern it reveals is sharper than any agency-level headcount story from the past year.

Here is the September 2025 scorecard, with OPM series codes added:

Series Occupation Departures Hires Replacement Rate Sept 2024 Baseline
0343 Management/Program Analyst 8,218 106 1% 122% (608 hired vs 497 gone)
2210 IT Management Specialist 7,456 181 2% 126% (814 hired vs 645 gone)
1102 Contracting Officer 3,520 174 5% Normal
1530 Statistician 319 3 Under 1% 169% (27 hired vs 16 gone)
0610 Nurse 1,185 731 62% Approximately normal
0602 Medical Officer Not reported Not reported 58% Approximately normal
1811 Criminal Investigator Not reported Not reported Above 100% Not reported

FedTools analysis of OPM separation and accession data via GovExec, July 2026.

Three of these series carry OPM special salary rates in some locations, which is a retention lever agencies already hold: 2210, 0610, and 1811. Check whether your own series and duty station sit on a live table in the Special Rate Tables Lookup.

Read the baseline column twice. In September 2024, every one of the analytical series was hiring above replacement. Statisticians were at 169%. This is not a slow decline. It is a cliff that formed in a single year.

Across just the two biggest series, 0343 and 2210, more than 15,000 people left in one month and fewer than 300 were hired.

Why Analysts Lost 94% While Nurses Kept 62%

The deferred resignation program did not pull evenly from the workforce. The same OPM data shows the DRP accounted for 86% to 94% of 2025 departures in the 2210, 1102, 1530, and 0343 series. In frontline clinical positions, it drove only about 20%.

That skew explains the whole table. The DRP was most attractive, and most available, to analytical and administrative staff. Clinical and law enforcement roles carried explicit exceptions and stronger retention pressure, so agencies kept hiring nurses and investigators while analyst desks emptied.

The hiring freeze then locked the gap in place. Under the current framework, most vacancies need a written critical-need exception signed by the agency head and approved by OPM before they can be filled. The broader workforce decline gets the headlines, but the occupation-level data shows who actually absorbed the cuts.

Who Replaced the People Who Left?

The Partnership for Public Service answered the other half of the question on August 20, 2026, in "The replacement gap: Inside the chaos of the Deferred Resignation Program." The headline count, 20,557 same-series positions refilled by June 2026, is in our DRP Backfill Report Card. Two figures inside the same report matter more for this series-by-series story.

First, timing. The Partnership counted 8,642 people hired into DRP-vacated subcomponents and job series between February and August 2025, while the employees they were replacing were still on paid administrative leave waiting to separate. Agencies were backfilling before the seats were empty.

Second, who. 63% of the new hires had never worked in the federal government, and pay-scale hires came in an average of 1.4 GS grades below the people who left. The report's own conclusion was blunt: "there was seemingly little thought about which positions were truly essential," naming nurses, attorneys, contact center representatives, and security guards among the roles refilled without a clear rationale. Its case studies are specific. The IRS lost 4,566 customer service representatives to the DRP. USDA let food safety inspectors take the DRP while hiring into the same duty stations. The FBI, by the account of current and former officials the Partnership cites, changed its hiring process in ways they describe as "a lowering of long-accepted standards."

Read the two datasets together and they describe two outcomes, not one. The analytical and administrative series in the table above, management analysts, IT specialists, contracting officers, statisticians, were mostly left empty, refilled at 1% to 5%. Frontline and public-facing series were more likely to be refilled, but with people who had less federal experience and sat at lower grades than the employees they replaced. Different jobs, same underlying pattern: the agency decides after the fact which functions it cannot do without, and pays for the decision twice.

What a 2% Replacement Rate Costs

The consequences are already documented, not projected.

GAO's July 2026 weapons program review found 37 DoD acquisition programs affected by DRP staff exits. One program office lost 40% of its core personnel in 2025 and backfilled only a third of them. New civilian hires need about a year to reach full productivity.

GAO's broader workforce report (GAO-26-108583) puts the frame around it: roughly 378,000 separations against 127,000 hires across the 22 CFO Act agencies, a net loss of 251,000 employees, or 11%, between December 2024 and January 2026. Programs are spreading the same workload across fewer people, and GAO documented employees working weekends to keep delays from becoming visible.

The skilled-trades version of the same story showed up in an August 2026 GAO review of two Army depots (GAO-26-108681): the combined permanent and term-limited workforce at Anniston and Red River Army Depots fell by 785 people, about 18 percent, from FY2021 to FY2025, at facilities the Army spent $7.1 billion operating over those years. Contractor headcount grew to absorb the losses, which is exactly the replacement-gap pattern: the maintainers who left took certifications and depot-specific experience that a contractor backfill does not restore.

For anyone still in one of these series, that is the daily reality behind the $15 billion the DRP cost: the work did not leave with the people.

If Your Series Is on the List: Your Three Levers

The data says agencies are not backfilling your type of role. So the practical question is what you control if your position disappears, or if you are deciding whether to wait for that to happen.

Lever 1: Severance pay, but only if you are RIF'd

Severance under 5 USC 5595 pays one week of basic pay per year of service for your first 10 years, two weeks per year after that, plus 2.5% extra for each full quarter you are over age 40. It caps at 52 weeks of pay.

Worked example for a GS-13 Step 5 IT specialist, age 48, 10 years of service:

Locality Annual Salary Weekly Rate Basic Severance Age Adjustment Total
Rest of US $120,734 $2,322 $23,224 $18,579 $41,803
Washington DC $138,024 $2,654 $26,543 $21,234 $47,777

Two disqualifiers matter more than the formula:

  • DRP takers get nothing. Deferred resignation is a voluntary separation under 5 CFR 550.703, and it waives severance completely.
  • Retirement-eligible employees get nothing. If you qualify for an immediate annuity when separated, 5 CFR 550.704 makes you ineligible for severance.

Lever 2: Deferred retirement, with the FEHB trap

If you leave before retirement eligibility with at least 5 years of creditable service, you can take a deferred FERS annuity at your Minimum Retirement Age. Your pension survives. Your FEHB coverage does not. The gap years between separation and your MRA mean finding your own health insurance, and that cost routinely outweighs the annuity math for people in their 40s.

Severance now versus deferred annuity later is the core decision, and it depends on your age, service years, and health coverage needs. The FERS Retirement Calculator shows what the annuity side of that trade looks like.

Lever 3: The exception paths

Two routes exist back into a frozen series:

  • Direct Hire Authority for cybersecurity. OPM extended DHA for IT cybersecurity positions at GS-12 through GS-15 through 2028. If you are a 2210 with a security specialty, your rehire odds are structurally better than the 2% headline.
  • Critical-need exceptions. Any agency can request one, in writing, signed by the agency head, with OPM approval required before the hire. GAO's finding that even weapons programs cannot get 1102s backfilled tells you how rarely these clear.

If your agency starts offering incentives to leave instead, run the numbers before signing anything. The Buyout Decision Quiz walks through the trade-offs, and the agency RIF risk ranking shows how your agency compares.

Calculate Your Severance

If your series is in the 1% to 5% replacement band, know your number before you need it. Use the free Severance Pay Calculator to run your exact salary, service years, and age. It takes about a minute.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my agency rehire if my 2210 IT position is cut?

Probably not soon. September 2025 data shows 181 IT hires against 7,456 departures, a 2% replacement rate. The exception is cybersecurity: Direct Hire Authority covers GS-12 to GS-15 cyber roles through 2028. Everything else in the 2210 series needs a critical-need exception approved by OPM.

Is there a hiring freeze exception for contracting officers or management analysts?

No blanket exception exists for 1102 or 0343 positions. Confirmed exceptions cover national security, immigration enforcement, public safety, and IT cybersecurity. For everything else, the agency head must submit a written critical-need request and get OPM approval before filling the vacancy. GAO found even DoD acquisition programs struggling to clear that bar.

If my position is eliminated, am I entitled to severance pay?

Only for involuntary separation when you are not yet eligible for an immediate annuity. A RIF'd GS-13 Step 5 with 10 years of service and Rest of US locality is owed about $41,800. If you took the DRP, the answer is $0, because deferred resignation counts as voluntary resignation under 5 CFR 550.703.

What is the difference between severance and deferred retirement?

Severance is a cash payout for involuntary separation. Deferred retirement preserves your FERS pension for collection at your MRA, but you lose FEHB coverage for the gap years in between. Most people fixate on the pension math and miss the health insurance gap, which is often the bigger dollar figure.

Which federal occupations are most at risk of not being rehired?

Analytical and technical series. September 2025 replacement rates: statisticians under 1%, management analysts 1%, IT specialists 2%, contracting officers 5%. Nurses were replaced at 62%, medical officers at 58%, and criminal investigators above one-to-one.

Did agencies actually replace the people who left under the DRP?

Some, with a catch on timing. The Partnership for Public Service found 8,642 people hired into DRP-vacated subcomponents and job series between February and August 2025, while the departing employees were still on paid administrative leave. That is a narrower slice of the 20,557 same-series positions the Partnership counted as filled by June 2026. It does not change the occupation table above: analytical series were still refilled at 1% to 5%.

Were the replacement hires as experienced as the people they replaced?

Not by the numbers. The Partnership found 63% of new hires into DRP-vacated roles had never worked for the federal government, and pay-scale hires averaged 1.4 GS grades below the employees who left. The report concluded there was seemingly little thought about which positions were truly essential, citing nurses, attorneys, contact center representatives, and security guards.

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