How could the return of Trump-era “Schedule F” job appointments reshape the federal workforce?

In the last months of his presidency, former President Trump signed an executive order that could have meant the biggest change to the federal government workforce in over a century. It created a new category of government jobs called “Schedule F” and tasked agencies with reclassifying positions into this category, effectively making them political appointees.

While President Biden revoked the order shortly after his inauguration, it’s estimated that as many as 50,000 career civil servants could have been reclassified, up from the roughly 4,000 political appointees currently in the government workforce. That might seem like a drop in the bucket since there are over 2 million civilian federal workers, but the change could have a sweeping effect on norms within the various government agencies.

And it’s poised to make a return. In Project 2025, the 922-page book of conservative policies created by the Heritage Foundation and former Trump administration officials, Schedule F gets a specific mention. Should the former president return to the White House, there’s a chance it will be reinstated.

But why is Schedule F such a big deal? The story actually starts back in the the 19th century and the creation of the modern federal workforce.

The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883

Political appointees have always been a part of our civil workforce, but in the early 19th century, every job in government was politically appointed — even down to the clerks. This came to be known as the spoils system.

“It was derived from the phrase, ‘to the victor belong the spoils,’ by New York Senator William Marcy, and he was referring to the victory of Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828,” said Nancy Unger, a historian at Santa Clara University. “Basically, the idea is that the spoils system gives federal jobs to political supporters, family and friends of the winning administration. So you get a job in the federal government not because you’re qualified, but because it’s a payoff for your support.”

This rampant cronyism became the norm for the next 50 years, but it caused plenty of problems in that time. Political appointees were sometimes more concerned with their political connections than performing their appointed jobs, among a litany of other issues.

“People that have a good loyalty, sure, they can actually be competent,” said Mark Summers, a historian at the University of Kentucky. “But ultimately, if you’re giving people jobs because they got out the vote or they’ve made sure to provide the money for it, what you’re doing is you’re hiring people that are going to be working as clerks that don’t know how to write.”

All of this came to head in the election of 1881. James Garfield was elected president, but four months after his inauguration, he was shot and killed by Charles Guiteau, a man who believed he had been passed over for a government job.

“There’s this enormous clamor,” said Summers. “And under his successor, Chester Arthur, they decide they’ve got to put through this Democratic proposal named after Senator George Pendleton of Ohio called the Pendleton Civil Service Act.”

Under the Pendleton Act, government workers would be required to take an exam before getting hired, and they couldn’t be fired without cause, preventing them from losing their position whenever a new administration came into office. At first, only a few jobs fell under these rules. That soon changed.

“With every president, the size of that workforce that’s under the civil service rules gets larger,” said Summers. “And they get larger because every president has the power to classify more of the offices outside of the system as civil service jobs.”

As more federal workers fell under the civil service system, it had a tangible effect on American lives according to Nancy Unger.

“You have things like the terrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory [fire],” said Unger. “With the Civil Service Act, we say, ‘OK, now we actually have to have regulations, and we have to have inspectors who are going to go in and make sure that these are actually enforced.”

Schedule F may not be a return to the spoils system as it was under President Andrew Jackson, but it could be an inflection point — much as the Pendleton Civil Service Act was in 1883. But what could happen today if the role of political appointees expands? For that, consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“If you you bring in too many politicals, if you do the Schedule F stuff, I think you run a danger there.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the gold standard for data on labor conditions. It publishes the monthly Employment Situation (otherwise known as the jobs report), the Consumer Price Index and even the Occupational Outlook Handbook that high school students sometimes reference with school guidance counselors.

“The data is collected by dozens of people,” said Keith Hall, a former BLS commissioner. “The monthly reports, maybe hundreds of people are helping put that together. They follow standards, they follow procedures, and they’re professionals. In fact, the folks at BLS are hired because of their technical expertise, their ability to to collect and understand data and keep the quality high.”

Over 2,000 people work at BLS, but the only political appointee in the agency is the commissioner, who serves fixed four-year terms. (Keith Hall, for example, was appointed by President George W. Bush and served from 2008 until 2012.) Even then, there are norms in place that act as a sort of firewall between the commissioners and interim data.

“As commissioner, I saw no number before it was final,” said Erica Groshen, BLS commissioner from 2013 until 2017. “There were a lot of limitations on what I could see. And I was happy with that.”

According to both Hall and Dr. Groshen, reclassifying even a portion of BLS as political appointees could dramatically change what the agency does. For Hall, it could break down that firewall and alter the culture within BLS.

“I considered it somewhat my job to protect the career people,” Hall said. “I don’t think you you want a statistical agency flinching when they have to deliver bad news or or hiding bad news. If you bring in too many politicals, if you do the Schedule F stuff, I think you run a danger there.”

For Groshen, there’s a risk that political appointees could try to spin the narrative around data releases.

“You could have speeding up or withholding releases at will for political purposes,” she said. “There are just a lot of opportunities for this kind of interference.”

But the biggest change might be to the reputation of the BLS.

“If you convert a large swath of the senior civil servants to political appointees, then you’re really going to seriously undermine trust in the objectivity of the data,” said Groshen. “You’d have people grasping at any other sources of data that they could, but there’s no substitute because they don’t have the breadth, the transparency and the history that that you get from the statistical agencies.”

Marketplace reached out to the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, but they declined to comment. Still, some of the architects behind Schedule F have defended it on the record, claiming that the government should be aligned with the policy priorities of the president. “What we’re all trying to grapple with is, how do we get an executive branch that is responsive to the public?” said Michael Rigas, former acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, at a panel in 2023.

Ultimately, if Schedule F is reinstated, it could be the greatest change to federal workforce since the Pendleton Civil Service Act. And then, perhaps not at first but slowly over time, that change could remake the norms inside the government, changing the way it works from the inside out.