The Trump administration is pushing to limit how many federal workers receive top ratings in annual performance reviews in agencies across the government, according to almost two dozen federal employees, a move experts say is illegal and could allow for agency staff to be more easily fired.
The efforts to restrict performance ratings has reached agencies including the Commerce, Justice, Energy and Interior departments as well as the General Services and Small Business administrations, according to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Last week, a National Park Service official informed managers on a conference call that they should give 80 percent of their staff a rating of 3 out of 5, while only 1 to 5 percent should receive top marks, according to people with knowledge of the call.
Directives have gone out to some staff at the Federal Aviation Administration, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, said Joanna Friedman, a partner at a federal employment law firm, who said she has heard about the evaluation policy from clients.
In recent months, top Trump appointees have emphasized the importance of curbing what the White House Office of Personnel Management described in June guidelines as “ending inflation of employee performance ratings.” It said “agencies should seek to ensure that a disproportionate number of employees are not rated at the highest performance levels,” but did not specify quotas for ratings. OPM did not respond to a request for comment.
In September, OPM chief Scott Kupor wrote on the agency’s website that performance ratings were inflated, likening them to grade inflation at universities, in a post titled “Sorry, Not Everyone Gets an A.” He said no more than 30 percent of senior government managers would get a top rating of 4 or 5.
Although in the private sector it is common practice for most employees to receive an average rating of 3 out of 5, that has not traditionally been the case in the federal government, said Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.
That’s because government managers cannot as easily reward high performing employees or fire those who perform poorly, Moynihan said. Giving out a high rating doesn’t cost a manager anything and avoids depressing morale, adding that low ratings could also provide justification for additional layoffs, which take into account performance evaluations in determining who is fired.
Several department officials confirmed Monday that they were working to recalibrate how the government assesses its workers’ performance.
“All employees will be evaluated fairly and impartially based upon their accomplishments and quality of work, but gone are the days where every federal bureaucratic receives an automatic five-star rating,” DOJ spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement.
Maggie Clemmons, a spokeswoman for the SBA, said that its policies comply with OPM guidance, which “seeks to end decades of inflated evaluations that reflexively rewarded underperforming employees, shielding them from meaningful discipline and contributing to a culture of mediocrity.”
“Employees at the SBA will no longer be receiving participation trophies; they will be held firmly to existing performance standards to ensure they are delivering measurable results for American taxpayers,” Clemmons said in a statement.
The GSA has “followed all rules and regulations” in implementing the president’s directives and OPM guidance regarding employee performance appraisals, spokeswoman Marianne Copenhaver said in a statement.
The Trump administration has sought to drastically shrink the government, and hundreds of thousands of federal workers have left the government this year in voluntary resignation programs, early retirements and layoffs. Trump officials have also pressed federal employees to justify their jobs — with Elon Musk, the former the head of the U.S. DOGE Service, demanding all workers send weekly emails listing five accomplishments.
High evaluations have been the norm in the federal government for more than a decade. A Government Accountability Office review of ratings given in 2013 found that two-thirds of federal workers got fours or fives.
“Most people don’t think they’re average. Most people think they are above average. And so when they’re told they’re an average, it’s a little bit of a disappointment,” Moynihan said.
The move to depress ratings is likely illegal, Friedman said, because it violates various federal policies, including government-wide regulations and agency-specific ones.
Across the federal bureaucracy, according to a guidance maintained by OPM, agencies are supposed to issue explanations of their evaluation plans within the first 30 days of any given performance period, Friedman said.
Employees must then sign the explanation and accept it to convey that they have understood, she added.
“You can’t retroactively change that rating scale,” Friedman said, “because then employees do not have proper notice of their expectations.”
Artificially restricting the pool of high performers also likely contravenes federal rules, Friedman said. It has always been true across government that supervisors are meant to evaluate their employees based on staffers’ actual performance, she said.
“So if there is a quota that they are required to follow, then they are not able to truly evaluate employees,” she said.
Many federal staffers were upset about the prospect of getting a mid-level rating, which historically has been “seen like getting a C in school,” one GSA worker said. A second GSA worker said the ratings are “a mark on our records that isn’t accurate or fair.”
An employee at the SBA said they had received a top rating of 5 but it was later revised down.
Employees said the ratings affect their annual performance bonus, their eligibility for promotion and their ability to find new jobs.
One employee at Commerce said that there was a directive to give 70 percent of staff a 3 out of 5 rating. “It seems like part of the larger effort to make us fairly miserable,” the person said.
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