8,218 Left, 106 Hired: The Federal Jobs Not Coming Back

Last Updated: July 15, 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.

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.

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 256,000 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.

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.

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