Federal Hiring Rebounded 27% in 2026. It Was Still 41% Below 2024.

Federal hiring has begun to climb out of its 2025 trough. It has not climbed back to where it was before the cuts.

Official personnel records show 69,530 people entered covered federal agencies from January through May 2026. That was 26.6% more than in the same months of 2025, when accessions collapsed to 54,912. But it was still 40.8% below the 117,476 accessions recorded in the first five months of 2024.

USAJOBS tells the same story from an earlier point in the hiring pipeline. FederalHiringData counted 20,030 official announcements opened from Aug. 1 through Aug. 26, 2026. That was 48% more than during the same dates in 2025. It was also 22% below 2024, 21.5% below 2019 and 41.1% below 2023.

The distinction matters because a posting is not a hire, and a hire does not guarantee workforce growth. Agencies can advertise more jobs, bring more people aboard and still shrink if departures remain higher. That is exactly what the latest data show: federal recruiting and onboarding recovered while covered executive-branch headcount continued to fall.

The evidence supports a measured answer to the question circulating among federal workers and applicants after the temporary U.S. DOGE Service organization reached its scheduled end date: agencies are hiring again, but not at a pre-cut pace, not evenly and not without continuing controls.

The rebound is real, and the baseline is unusually low

Year-over-year percentages can make a weak recovery look stronger than it is. The 48% increase in August announcements is real, but its comparison point is August 2025, after hiring restrictions, reorganizations and large workforce reductions had sharply reduced federal recruiting.

The longer benchmark changes the interpretation. The 20,030 announcements opened through Aug. 26, 2026 exceeded the 13,530 opened during the same part of 2025. Yet the current count remained roughly 5,500 below both 2019 and 2024, and nearly 14,000 below 2023.

Those are announcement records, not vacancy totals. An announcement can cover one position, multiple positions or an unspecified number. It can also list many duty locations. Counting each control number once provides a consistent measure of recruiting activity without pretending that every posting represents one hire.

The monthly pattern also argues against treating the July transition as a single switch that turned hiring back on. Official USAJOBS volume rose from 16,173 announcements in January to 23,844 in April. May and June were nearly flat at about 21,900, July rose modestly to 22,576, and Aug. 1-26 produced 20,030. Much of the rebound was already underway before July 4.

This sequence does not establish that the end of the temporary DOGE organization caused the increase. It shows that agencies were rebuilding hiring pipelines during the months leading up to that date and continued to advertise positions afterward.

What ended on July 4, and what did not

The label “DOGE ended” is too broad for what the governing documents say.

Executive Order 14158 created a temporary U.S. DOGE Service organization and set July 4, 2026 as its termination date. An August 2026 Government Accountability Office review confirmed that the temporary organization ended. GAO also found that the broader U.S. DOGE Service and DOGE-related work could continue beyond that date.

Hiring controls did not automatically disappear with the temporary organization. Executive Order 14356 continued agency strategic hiring committees and annual staffing plans. OPM's implementation guidance instructed agencies, before approval of those plans, to use one new hire for every four departures, subject to legal requirements and stated exceptions. National security, immigration enforcement and public safety were among the mission areas given special treatment.

So the relevant policy environment is not a clean before-and-after break. The temporary team ended. Centralized staffing review, agency plans and mission prioritization remained. The data should be read as hiring under a new control structure, not as a return to the old one.

OPM was also building shared candidate pools. In a June 2026 cross-government hiring update, the agency said 3,529 qualified candidates were available across technology, project management and administrative, human resources, contracting and financial-management pools. That is evidence of an effort to speed selected hiring, not evidence that all 3,529 people had been hired.

Actual accessions recovered more slowly than postings

USAJOBS measures the public recruiting signal. OPM's accession records get closer to completed hiring because they count personnel actions that brought people into covered agencies.

From January through May, accessions rose from 54,912 in 2025 to 69,530 in 2026. The increase of 14,618 was substantial. The 2026 total remained 47,946 below the same five months of 2024.

The monthly sequence shows how unusual 2025 was. Accessions fell from 22,822 in January 2025 to 4,969 in March before recovering to 9,709 in May. In 2026, the monthly count started lower than January 2025, bottomed at 8,420 in February, then rose each month to 24,395 in May.

May 2026 nearly reached May 2024's 27,980 accessions. That is the clearest evidence of a functioning rebound. It is still one month, and spring federal hiring includes strong seasonal cycles. The year-to-date gap is a safer measure than the final monthly point alone.

The timing also explains why announcement and accession growth rates differ. An agency may advertise a position, review applicants, make a tentative offer, complete security or suitability checks and set an entry date over a period of weeks or months. August postings cannot explain January-May hires. The two datasets are parallel indicators of recovery at different stages, not a direct conversion funnel.

The recovery is broadening, but mission priorities still dominate

Veterans Affairs produced 5,368 of the 20,030 announcements in the August 2026 cohort. Navy, Army, the Department of Defense and Air Force together produced another 8,445. Homeland Security and Justice added 2,184.

Those seven department groupings accounted for more than four-fifths of the cohort. Health care, defense, border and public-safety missions therefore remained central to the recruiting recovery.

There are signs of broader activity, however. The five largest department groupings made up 69% of the August 2026 cohort, down from 78.4% in the equivalent 2025 cohort. Interior announcements rose from 214 to 599. Transportation rose from 256 to 520. Agriculture rose from 253 to 462. Commerce rose from 70 to 217, and Labor from only three to 141.

The onboard-hire data identify a similar but not identical set of leaders.

Veterans Affairs alone contributed more than half of the net accession increase across covered agencies. Its gain is consistent with the USAJOBS cohort, where the Veterans Health Administration was the largest named agency with 5,026 announcements.

The agency results also show why policy labels are poor substitutes for operational data. Agriculture's January-May accession count increased 63.4%, and Interior's increased 33.0%. Those departments have large seasonal land-management workforces, so their spring totals partly reflect when firefighters, park staff and field employees enter. Justice rose 86.1%, consistent with stronger legal, corrections and investigative hiring. Commerce more than doubled from a much smaller base.

The Defense department total in the OPM table combines its component workforces. USAJOBS preserves Navy, Army, Air Force and other department labels separately in the announcement data, which is why the two tables are not presented as a one-to-one agency conversion. Their direction is still informative: official Defense accessions rose 13.4% overall, while August announcements increased across Navy, Army, Air Force and the broader Defense group.

Social Security is the most dramatic percentage change and the clearest warning about small denominators. Its 620 accessions were more than 14 times the 44 recorded in the same months of 2025. They were not evidence of a fully rebuilt agency. OPM's employment snapshot still placed Social Security headcount 1,182 below December 2025 and 8,416 below December 2024. A reopening of one part of the pipeline can coexist with a much smaller organization.

For the same reason, this analysis emphasizes counts and baselines alongside percentages. A 500% increase can describe six hires instead of one; a 10% increase can describe thousands. The biggest operational changes belong to agencies where both the absolute gain and the resulting level are substantial.

Not every department participated in the accession recovery. Homeland Security recorded 7,785 accessions through May 2026, 916 fewer than a year earlier. Health and Human Services fell by 450, State by 436, Treasury by 399 and the Environmental Protection Agency by 302. NASA, the Small Business Administration, General Services Administration and OPM also remained below their 2025 totals.

That unevenness is one reason a government-wide percentage cannot answer whether a particular applicant's field or agency has reopened.

Administrative and technology postings grew faster than clinical series

The largest USAJOBS posting increases were not confined to uniformed-support or medical occupations.

Management and Program Analysis, series 0343, rose from 254 announcements in the Aug. 1-26, 2025 cohort to 786 in 2026, an increase of 532. Miscellaneous Administration and Program, series 0301, rose by 476. Information Technology Management, series 2210, rose by 311. Clerk and Assistant, financial administration, human resources, general engineering, program management, attorney and contracting series all recorded meaningful gains.

Nurse announcements remained the single largest series at 1,059, but their year-over-year increase was only 35. Medical Officer rose by 21, while Social Work fell by 84. The rebound in advertising was therefore wider than the familiar story of Veterans Affairs clinical hiring.

OPM accessions offer a different occupational picture because they reflect seasonal entry dates and completed hires. Wildland Fire Management rose by 3,728 accessions from January through May. Clerk and Assistant rose by 1,638, Nurse by 1,634, Border Patrol by 1,348, General Inspection and Enforcement by 969, and Medical Support Assistance by 900. Park Ranger and biological-science hiring also increased, making the spring comparison especially sensitive to seasonal schedules.

Public opportunities rose, but internal pathways rose faster

Applicants also care whether the new volume is genuinely open to them.

In the 2026 August cohort, 9,845 announcements carried “The public” as a hiring path. That was 2,931 more than in 2025, a 42.4% increase. Public-path announcements represented 49.2% of the 2026 cohort, down slightly from 51.1% in 2025.

Federal or internal pathways appeared on 13,065 announcements, up 56.1%. FederalHiringData's measure includes Internal to an agency, federal employees in the competitive or excepted service, agency-employee-only postings, and CTAP/ICTAP or Reemployment Priority List career-transition eligibility. Because one announcement can carry several hiring paths, the public and internal counts overlap.

The practical conclusion is mixed. The public market is substantially larger than it was a year ago. Internal and displaced-worker pathways expanded even faster, so the rebound is not equivalent to throwing every position open to anyone.

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Appointment type provides another check. Permanent appointments accounted for 18,462 announcements, or 92.2% of the 2026 cohort. The 2025 share was almost identical at 92.0%. Temporary, term, seasonal, internship and recent-graduate appointment types together rose from 615 to 926, but their combined share barely moved. The overall posting recovery was not produced mainly by relabeling work as temporary.

Direct Hire Authority is harder to measure from the Historic JOA fields alone. A conservative title search found 128 announcements with “direct hire” or “direct-hire” in the title in 2026, compared with 108 in 2025. Agencies are not required to put the authority in the title, so those counts are a floor, not a complete inventory. OPM explains that Direct Hire Authority changes competitive examining procedures when a severe shortage or critical need is established; it does not remove qualification requirements.

Recruiting increased while headcount kept falling

The most important guardrail is the government's total covered workforce.

OPM's employment records show 2,312,301 employees in December 2024, 2,074,649 in December 2025 and 2,025,993 in May 2026. The covered workforce fell by 237,652 during 2025, then by another 48,656 from December through May.

Those numbers exclude the Postal Service and other populations outside the source's coverage. FederalHiringData also uses May, not June, as the latest complete headcount month because the available June extract has an important Defense coverage gap.

Several departments illustrate the difference between flow and stock. Veterans Affairs more than doubled accessions to 15,051 through May, yet its headcount was 5,461 lower in May than in December. Defense accessions rose by 2,257 while department headcount fell by 12,113. Justice added nearly 2,000 more accessions year over year while headcount fell by 1,105 after December.

Agriculture and Interior moved differently: both increased accessions and ended May with higher headcount than in December. The same national policy environment therefore produced agency-specific outcomes based on departures, seasonal work, mission exceptions, onboarding speed and approved staffing plans.

This is why the phrase “agencies are hiring again” is directionally true but incomplete. More people are entering. More positions are being advertised. The government was still losing workers on net through the latest complete employment month.

Geography points to a capital-area rebound

Location data show a particularly sharp increase around the capital region. Counting each announcement once for every state it names, District of Columbia listings rose from 617 in the August 2025 cohort to 1,841 in 2026. Virginia rose from 942 to 1,809 and Maryland from 489 to 1,266.

Texas increased from 993 to 1,703 and California from 1,238 to 1,811. Florida, Washington, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania were also among the largest 2026 state totals.

These are posting-location signals, not jobs filled in each state. Multi-location announcements appear in more than one state count, and nationwide postings can name many locations. Still, the capital-area gains align with the rebound in management analysis, administration, technology, human resources, finance, engineering and contracting series.

What applicants should take from the data

The market is less closed than it was in 2025. Public-path announcements rose by nearly 3,000 in the matched August comparison, permanent postings remained the norm, and administrative and technical series participated in the increase. Applicants can search current federal jobs by agency, occupational series, location and hiring path rather than assuming that only law-enforcement or medical positions are moving.

But the recovery remains selective. An applicant should check the “This job is open to” section, appointment type, closing date and number-of-applicants limit on every announcement. A government-wide rebound does not override an internal-only path, a short application window or a specialized eligibility requirement.

It is also too early to treat the current pace as a durable trend. OPM's May accession count was much stronger than early 2026, while headcount continued to decline. The next several complete employment and accession releases will show whether higher recruiting converts into a stable workforce or merely slows the contraction.

FederalHiringData's statistics, agency directory and article archive provide additional views of the current and historical data. The safest summary today is neither “the freeze is over” nor “nobody is hiring.” The federal hiring machinery is moving again. It is moving under constraints, from a deep trough, and at very different speeds across government.

Methodology and limitations

FederalHiringData queried the official USAJOBS Historic JOA API for complete announcement cohorts based on position open date. The main current comparison covers Aug. 1 through Aug. 26 in both 2025 and 2026. Benchmark totals use the same dates in 2019, 2023 and 2024. Monthly 2026 counts use complete calendar months through July and Aug. 1-26 for the current partial month. Each USAJOBS control number is counted once in the main totals.

Hiring-path categories are nonexclusive. The measured internal group combines internal-agency, competitive-service and excepted-service federal employee, agency-employee-only, and CTAP/ICTAP/RPL career-transition paths. Public-only, internal-only and both rows reconcile those overlaps. Direct-hire counts are limited to explicit title language and are intentionally described as a conservative signal.

OPM FedScope accessions and employment files supply the personnel measures. Accessions cover January through May in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Employment snapshots use December 2024, December 2025 and May 2026. OPM values are aggregated from privacy-protected public records, and not every federal entity or employee population is included. May is used as the latest complete headcount comparison because the local June 2026 extract has incomplete Defense coverage.

An announcement is not a person, a vacancy count or a completed hire. An accession is an entry action, not net workforce growth. Headcount is a point-in-time stock shaped by both entries and exits. The analysis does not claim that the scheduled termination of the temporary DOGE organization caused the observed rebound.