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A month into a Defense Department hiring freeze meant to shrink the civilian workforce, some employees who had been preparing to move into new positions are still living out of hotel rooms, with their personal belongings long since shipped overseas.
While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has, on paper, allowed exemptions for some jobs, a lack of clarity on the process and a requirement that every approval go through his office has left people waiting weeks for answers.
In at least one case, his office denied an exemption for someone whose permanent change-of-station move began on March 2, the day the hiring freeze began.
“The memo says PCSs in progress should be allowed, so no answer why mine was not,” the civilian told Defense One.
There’s also been no guidance, the civilian said, on who is meant to pay the $5,000-plus hotel bill that has been mounting during this waiting period.
Another civilian shipped their household goods in February, and has been waiting weeks for an exemption decision.
“I did learn my goods have arrived overseas and I have received emails to coordinate delivery,” they said. “If not claimed within 90 days, storage transfers to my expense and ultimately will be disposed of as the government sees fit eventually, if not claimed.”
The Pentagon declined to disclose how many exemption requests it has received, how many it has granted, what its guidance is for covering the expenses of employees while they wait for a decision and what employees should do if their exemptions are denied but they have already shipped their belongings and secured housing for a canceled move.
“What a mess for me and many others,” the civilian said. “What I have discovered is that at all echelons of command, there seems to be a sense of not knowing what to do next.”
A March 18 memo calls for all exemption requests to be routed through the Pentagon’s personnel office every Tuesday. Jobs that contribute to national security, immigration enforcement and others will receive exemptions, the memo says.
What it does not include is any guidance for what employees should do if their PCS moves are on hold, and how the Pentagon will proceed if exemptions are not granted and employees are made to revert to their previous positions.
Following a Defense One query on Tuesday, the Pentagon’s personnel chief released a statement that hinted at some of the motivations behind the hiring freeze.
“Over the past two decades, the defense civilian workforce expanded and evolved to support low-intensity conflicts with violent extremist organizations around the globe. That era has passed,” Jules W. Hurst III wrote.
While the statement reiterated the Pentagon’s hiring priorities, it did not address the effect the hiring freeze has had on current civilian employees, whose promotions and transfers are also considered new hires under DOD human-resources policy.
The hiring freeze is part of Hegseth’s effort to shrink the department’s 760,000-person civilian workforce by five to eight percent, following direction from the White House and Elon Musk’s DOGE office. Other elements of the hurried effort have also seen rocky rollouts, such as the White House-directed firing of workers in their probationary periods, which was reversed by a judge who declared that the dismissals, ostensibly for cause, were “based on a lie.”
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