Federal agencies have only a few days left to carry out the Schedule Policy/Career reclassifications. They must notify affected employees of their new classifications and update personnel records by the June 10 deadline.
With that date drawing near, many are trying to find out precisely which career civil servants — and how many — will be reclassified. Yet much of that information is still unclear.
The White House has released a 229-page appendix that lists the agencies, job titles, and corresponding position description codes being moved into Schedule Policy/Career. So far, it is the most detailed public resource available on the types of roles being reclassified.
But for some, the information the White House has made public falls short. Protect Democracy, one of several groups suing the Trump administration over Schedule Policy/Career, noted that the appendix fails to specify the total number of positions affected, how many employees fall within each position, the seniority levels involved, or the governmentwide occupational series numbers.
“The public is left doing a lot of guesswork — guesswork they shouldn’t have to do — about exactly who is being moved and what work is now considered ‘policy-influencing’ under the administration’s definition,” said Jules Torti, counsel for Protect Democracy, in an interview. “Civil servants are telling us they don’t know their own position description number, and many still haven’t been informed whether they’ve been moved. There’s a great deal of confusion about what this all means.”
The Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to Federal News Network’s inquiries about the administration’s choices regarding what data to include in the appendix or whether more detailed information would be made available later.
The appendix does clarify certain questions, such as how many distinct agency position titles are affected. According to the White House, roughly 97% of reclassified employees hold either GS-15 or Senior-Level (SL) positions.
Across the government, the reclassified positions cover employees working in human capital, procurement, financial management, federal grants, communications, public affairs, and many other fields. Among the most commonly listed job titles are program managers, attorney advisors, program analysts, and human resources specialists, according to data analysis by Leadership Connect.
The White House appendix includes thousands of position description numbers — multi-digit codes that identify specific federal positions and differ from agency to agency. In many instances, the appendix lists several different codes under one position title, typically depending on factors such as the role’s duties and seniority level. For example, the Defense Department lists six separate codes for an HR officer position.
Altogether, the White House document contains just under 4,900 position description codes. Senior administration officials have said that close to 8,000 employees have been reclassified, which means that in some cases, multiple employees would be reclassified under a single position title. Certain roles on the list — such as chief-level executives or deputy directors — would typically have only one person in the position. But other roles, including various agency advisors, analysts, and specialists, could have multiple employees reclassified under the same title.
“A single entry on the list might mean one job is being reclassified, or it could mean three dozen jobs with that same title are being reclassified. There’s simply no way to tell just by looking at the list,” Protect Democracy wrote in a June 4 online post. “Since the administration clearly has these figures — it has been citing numbers and statistics publicly — the decision to keep that data hidden does not appear to be accidental.”
Federal employees who want to check whether their position is affected can look up their position description number on their SF-50 personnel form and compare it against the White House’s appendix.
Based on the appendix, the number of reclassified positions varies significantly from one agency to the next. Some agencies are moving hundreds of different position titles into Schedule Policy/Career, while others are reclassifying only a small number.
The Defense Department is reclassifying more than 1,600 distinct position codes — the highest of any executive branch agency. The departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services follow, reclassifying 571 and 400 position codes, respectively.
At the Treasury Department, 223 types of positions are being reclassified, along with 172 at the Commerce Department and 158 at the Interior Department. OMB is reclassifying 137, and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Justice, and Transportation are each reclassifying roughly 120.
Agencies’ June 10 implementation deadline comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that finalized the conversion of nearly 8,000 positions into Schedule Policy/Career, a new excepted category of career federal employment. The approximate figure of 8,000 affected positions is well below the Trump administration’s earlier estimate of 50,000.
Schedule Policy/Career will remove long-standing civil service protections from thousands of career federal employees across the executive branch who occupy “policy-influencing” positions. The president’s order reclassifies “senior federal workers in policy-related roles as at-will employees, enabling swift accountability for those in influential positions,” the White House said in a fact sheet on Wednesday.
While many of the reclassified positions involve senior officials such as agency component leaders, directors, and executive officers, some of the affected roles appear less focused on policy and more on day-to-day operations, according to Torti.
“I’m seeing positions like epidemiologist, health scientist, public health analyst — people who, to me, are doing hands-on, frontline work,” Torti said. “But at this point, it’s impossible to verify without an extraordinary amount of effort — and even then, I don’t think the public can learn much from this list.”
If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email drew.friedman@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at drewfriedman.11
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