Quick exits: Record turnover among President Trump's non-Senate-confirmed appointees

President Donald Trump made more political appointments, and at a faster pace, than any modern president. Now, his non-Senate-confirmed appointees are leaving in record numbers after record-short tenures.

These departures are part of a wider breakdown in federal leadership. Senate-confirmed leaders above these appointees are also leaving at record rates, with few nominated to replace them.

Some of the resulting vacancies are being filled by non-confirmed appointees in an acting capacity, putting these roles in the hands of officials who, as this analysis shows, are unlikely to stay long. And beneath the political ranks, the career Senior Executive Service has fallen to its smallest size in at least 25 years, reducing the ranks of experienced leaders who normally steady agencies through political turnover.

The turnover among non-Senate-confirmed appointees stands out across every measure— in its scale, in its spread across agencies and in the speed with which appointees have left:

• Some 934 non-Senate-confirmed appointees have departed in the first 18 months of the second Trump administration, more than twice the totals of Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama at the same point, and 58% more than Trump’s own first term.
• Nearly one-quarter (24.6%) of Trump’s non-Senate-confirmed appointees have already departed the administration, the second-highest departure rate of any recent presidency, behind only Trump’s first term.
• Six Cabinet departments have lost more than a quarter of their non-Senate-confirmed appointees: Commerce (32.4%), Transportation (30.8%), Homeland Security (29.2%), Labor (29.0%), Justice (27.2%) and Veterans Affairs (26.5%).

Nearly half (44.9%) of those who left served less than a year, and over a quarter (25.3%) served six months or less.

The result is a government led by appointees who rarely stay long enough to learn the institutions they serve in.

A record exodus

Most of the roughly 4,000 appointments a president can make do not require Senate confirmation. Some are senior White House aides and advisors. Others are non-career members of the Senior Executive Service, who take on senior management roles just below the top appointees, or Schedule C appointees, who fill confidential and policy roles ranging from junior assistants to chiefs of staff and senior advisors.

Through the first 18 months of the second Trump administration, 934 non-career SES and Schedule C appointees have departed government service. That is more than twice the number who left under Obama (426) and Biden (432), and 58% more than the 592 who left during Trump’s first term.

The 934 departures are a conservative measure of the churn. The Office of Personnel Management only reports when officials have left government entirely, not those who vacated one position for another inside the administration.

The scale of these departures is in part a product of how many of these appointments Trump made in the first place. He has politicized the leadership of the federal government more than any modern president. As of July 31, he had 2,928 non-career SES and Schedule C appointees serving across the executive branch, the most of any administration in at least 40 years and nearly 400 above the previous high of 2,531, set under President Bill Clinton.

The record churn has not slowed the politicization of federal leadership. It has instead required a relentless pace of new appointments to sustain it. Since January, the president has made about 160 non-Senate-confirmed appointments per month, nearly 100 more than the average of around 70 under Obama, Trump’s first term and Biden over the same period.

The departures are not only a function of scale. Nearly a quarter (24.6%) of the appointees Trump brought on during his first 18 months have already left. That is well above the rate under Biden (18.4%) and Obama (20.4%). The only recent president with a higher rate is Trump himself: During his first term, 28.3% of these appointees had departed by the same point. High turnover among political appointees is not an anomaly of the second Trump administration so much as a pattern across both of his terms.

Where turnover is concentrated

Some agencies have lost far more of their appointees than others.

Six Cabinet departments have already lost more than a quarter of the non-Senate-confirmed appointees who served in them since the start of the second Trump administration: Commerce (32.4%), Transportation (30.8%), Homeland Security (29.2%), Labor (29.0%), Justice (27.2%) and Veterans Affairs (26.5%). In five of the six, turnover has run higher than under Trump’s first term and well above the average under Obama and Biden.

The losses have been steepest at the Department of Homeland Security, where 97 non-Senate-confirmed appointees have left, more than three times as many as under the first Trump administration and 2 1/2 times the average under Obama and Biden. This disruption comes as DHS commands historic budgetary resources and reorients itself toward civil immigration enforcement, a shift in mission that places a premium on stable leadership rather than a revolving door at the top.

The Department of Commerce has lost 57 appointees, over double the first Trump administration and more than three times the average under Obama and Biden. The turnover falls on a department at the center of the administration’s agenda, from trade policy to preparations already underway for the 2030 census, work that depends on a continuity of leadership.

Turnover has been lowest at the departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development. However, even these rates sit above where turnover stood under Obama and Biden for the departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development.

Gone within a year

The appointees who have left did not stay long.

Nearly half (44.9%), or 419 officials, served less than a year before departing, and over a quarter (25.3%), or 236 officials, served six months or less. Under Biden, by contrast, most appointees who left had stayed at least a year, and only one in 10 departed within six months.

The Office of Personnel Management does not report how long appointees hold a particular position, only their total length of federal service when they leave. That leaves position-level tenure out of reach, but for most of this population it still captures their time in the administration.

Across each of the last three administrations, roughly 70% of the non-Senate-confirmed appointees placed in a president’s first 18 months arrived with no prior federal government experience. For them, total federal service is the time they spent in the administration that appointed them, regardless of how many positions they held within it.

That also means the short tenures are, if anything, understated. The share who served less than a year, and less than six months, include the roughly 30% of appointees who came in with prior federal service. Their recorded totals reflect earlier government work on top of their time in this administration. Strip that earlier service out and the share of appointees who spent less than a year, or less than six months, in the second Trump administration would be higher still.

The cost of leaders who do not stay

Leading and managing well depends on things that take time to build: an understanding of how an organization works, relationships with the career staff who carry out decisions and a willingness to invest in problems that pay off over the long run. Appointees who expect a short tenure have little reason to take that work on and do not have the opportunity to see it through. What is left is a political leadership that is oriented toward quick, visible wins, and rarely in place long enough to answer for the results.

Some turnover is normal. Political appointees have always cycled through government faster than the career workforce, and short tenures come with the territory.

But the second Trump administration has pushed a familiar pattern to a new high, losing more of these appointees, and losing them faster, than any recent president. When churn at that level meets a career leadership already thinned by heavy attrition, agencies have less continuity to fall back on.

Administrations can do more to keep appointees in place long enough to deliver results. But the more durable fix is structural: A government that relies on fewer political appointees and a career workforce with enough experienced leaders to steady those appointees would be far less exposed to the churn documented here.

Investigating and working toward the right balance is a central aim of the Partnership’s Government for a New Era initiative, through which we will continue to track the politicization of federal leadership and the reforms needed to set it on the right course—balancing political responsiveness with effective government management.

Learn more about the Government for a New Era initiative, our effort to develop reforms for a more effective, responsive and accountable government.

Author: Chris Piper