The Army has officially lifted its civilian hiring freeze, nearly 20 months after President Donald Trump imposed a governmentwide hiring freeze on his first day back in office. 

In a Sept. 25 memo obtained by Federal News Network, Army Undersecretary Michael Obadal said the Army can “now resume hiring, up to 96% of the Army-wide direct-funded full-time equivalents, to meet priority missions within budgetary constraints.”

Obadal directed the Army’s assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs to issue guidance on implementing the modified hiring policy.

“Effective Sept. 25, 2026, the Army resumed hiring to meet priority missions within budgetary constraints. The strategic resumption of hiring reinforces the work of our indispensable civilian population, who directly empower warfighter lethality, operational readiness and national defense,” Army Spokesperson Christopher Surridge told Federal News Network.

Approximately 43,000 people have left the Army since Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025, according to Office of Personnel Management federal workforce data.  The service, however, has hired about 10,000 people since then, partially offsetting those losses.

The Army Corps of Engineers has seen one of the service’s largest workforce departures – over 6,000 civilian employees left since January 2025. Installation Management Command has also lost a significant share of its workforce – approximately 4,300 people have left the command since 2025.

Others have seen fewer departures, but those losses still represent a significant portion of their workforce. The Army Acquisition Support Center, for instance, lost over 1000 civilians. Approximately 900 people left Army Cyber Command, while Army Contracting Command lost approximately 950 people. 

Since January 2025, the Trump administration has used a combination of a hiring freeze, involuntary layoffs of probationary employees, reductions in force and the deferred resignation program to shrink the size of the federal workforce. Federal agencies were also authorized to independently administer the deferred resignation program and voluntary early retirement authority for civilians.

The Army, for instance, has offered multiple rounds of the deferred resignation program to its employees since 2025. 

Over the past year, the service has undergone major organizational changes as part of its broader Transformation Initiative, merging major commands and consolidating or closing what it described as redundant headquarters. 

Amid that reorganization, the service offered DRP to civilian employees identified as surplus or serving in roles that could be reassigned to surplus workers instead of conducting layoffs. It later conducted a “rebalancing effort” — the service’s attempt to fill vacant positions with surplus civilian employees.

The Army said the hiring freeze gave the service the opportunity to “make significant progress in optimizing and rebalancing” its civilian workforce.

While the governmentwide hiring freeze has not been lifted, federal agencies  have been able to recruit candidates, but hiring them requires jumping through a number of administrative hoops.

The Defense Department, for example, has started bringing on civilian employees, but there is one caveat — a new strategic hiring committee has to approve the hiring action. 

The Department of the Air Force said its strategic hiring committee was established in January 2026, which allowed the service to “proceed with full hiring authority.”

“The committee meets on a biweekly to monthly basis to review and render decisions on individual and categorical hiring requests and approve and monitor the agency staffing plan. The decisions rendered include approval of individual and categorical hiring exemptions and approval of the fiscal 2026 DAF annual staffing plan,” a Department of the Air Force spokesperson told Federal News Network. 

“The committee’s mission-based review of workforce hiring and attrition trends, coupled with agency headcount and fiscal civilian workforce budgetary benchmarks, assisted in forecasting projected hiring needs for the remainder of the fiscal year. As an example, the United States Space Force is actively growing its civilian force to meet increased mission demands defending the space domain. A categorical hiring exemption was approved enabling USSF to hire with speed and precision to their budgeted growth demands and the committee reviews monthly progress towards these goals,” the spokesperson added.

The Air Force and Space Force are looking to add thousands of civilian jobs after acknowledging they cut staff below established requirements in 2026.  

A government watchdog recently found that the Pentagon did not analyze the impacts of its workforce reductions, during the 2025 downsizing or in prior years. It also found that the Pentagon has no plan to assess lessons learned from its 2025 workforce reduction efforts. 

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747

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