The Federal Employee Survival Blog
Cut through the jargon and get the clarity you need to stay a step ahead of agency politics. Each article unpacks new policy shifts, court rulings, and workplace trends, then turns them into actionable tactics—so you can head off discipline, invoke EEO or whistleblower protections with confidence, and keep your documentation airtight. We also archive our most popular social-media explainer threads here, giving you the same insights followed by more than 150,000 people online even if you never scroll on those sites. Read, prepare, and keep your federal career firmly in your control.
The State Department appears to be testing a model other agencies may soon copy. In July 2025, it carried out roughly 1,350 layoffs, including about 246 Foreign Service officers on domestic assignment...
Federal employees often experience policy changes one rule at a time. But sometimes the legal significance becomes clear only when multiple proposals are viewed together. Three recent rulemaking propo...
A recent federal court ruling offers an important reminder that even major personnel actions must comply with the rule of law. In a decision involving the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a feder...
Federal employees have long understood one principle about reductions in force (RIFs): years of service matter. Seniority has historically been a key factor protecting experienced employees when agenc...
Many federal employees assume performance ratings only matter if they fall to the very bottom of the scale. In reality, the bigger risk in a forced distribution system often happens in the middle.
Un...
Federal employees at the IRS and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service recently received alarming news: Treasury announced that the agencies’ collective bargaining agreement with the National Treasury Empl...
Federal employees received a temporary reprieve when Congress restricted agencies from using appropriated funds to initiate or carry out new reductions in force (RIFs). That restriction is tied to the...
Federal employees facing a Reduction-in-Force (RIF) already carry enough uncertainty. A new proposed rule from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would fundamentally change how those actions are...
Federal employees are hearing a lot of noise about layoffs—and most of it misses a critical development. Even though the recent shutdown has ended, Congress quietly extended a key protection that temp...
A federal judge has allowed a significant Privacy Act lawsuit to move forward, and for former HHS employees impacted by last year’s Reduction in Force (RIF), that decision matters. The case does not p...
The Department of Health and Human Services has officially rescinded every Reduction in Force (RIF) notice issued to employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). For...
For many federal employees, last year’s wave of reductions in force (RIFs) and reorganizations felt abrupt and opaque. Decisions appeared to come from nowhere, with little explanation about why certai...
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