# Competitive Service The **competitive service** is the default category of federal civilian employment. By statute (5 U.S.C. § 2102) it is every executive-branch civil-service position not excepted by statute, not a Senate-confirmed presidential appointment, and not in the [[Senior Executive Service]]. Positions are filled through competitive examination under standards set by [[OPM]] and are subject to veterans' preference. Employees who complete their [[Probationary Period]] can be removed only "for such cause as will promote the efficiency of the service," with adverse-action procedure and a right of appeal to the [[Merit Systems Protection Board]]. CRS puts roughly two-thirds of the ~2 million-person civilian workforce here and about one-third in the [[Excepted Service]]. It descends directly from the [[Pendleton Act of 1883]] and took its modern shape in the [[Civil Service Reform Act of 1978]]. See [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] for where it sits. ## Three ways in, three ways out The competitive service protects a job through three layers. The second term has pressed on all three. 1. **Entry: who gets hired.** OPM's **Merit Hiring Plan** (May 29, 2025) added four short essay questions to applications. One of them asked applicants which executive orders or policy initiatives were significant to them and how they would advance them. Unions called it a loyalty test. In September 2026 Judge George O'Toole Jr. (D. Mass.) barred the question from job announcements at GS-5 and above, holding it likely violated the First Amendment and the APA. He wrote that there is "no legitimate governmental interest in inquiring into the political beliefs of applicants." The question had appeared in more than 70,000 postings. Separately, OPM's **"rule of many"** final rule (effective November 7, 2025) replaced the old rule of three. It lets managers pick from a larger ranked pool, under authority Congress gave in the FY2019 NDAA. 2. **Probation: the unprotected first year.** New hires can be let go without the full adverse-action process, which is why probationary employees were the first mass casualties in February 2025 (see [[Probationary Period]]). 3. **Tenure: the box itself.** The most consequential lever is not firing but **reclassification**, which moves a position out of the competitive service entirely. [[Executive Order 14410]] (June 3, 2026) moved about 8,000 positions into Schedule Policy/Career ([[Schedule F]]). Those employees keep their competitive *status* but lose the adverse-action procedure and the MSPB appeal. ## The enforcement problem The competitive service's protection is only as good as the board that hears appeals. The MSPB was without a quorum for much of 2025, regained one in October 2025, and runs on two of three seats. After [[Trump v. Slaughter]] (June 29, 2026), its own members' tenure protection is in doubt too. The statute still says "for cause." The machinery for enforcing that has been hollowed out. ## See Also - [[Excepted Service]] · [[Schedule F]] · [[Schedule G]] - [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] · [[General Schedule]] - [[Civil Service Reform Act of 1978]] · [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] · [[Reduction in Force]]