From bowling repairs to zoology, Trump admin consolidates job titles affecting 5,000 feds

Bartenders, meatcutters, woodworkers and bookbinders will all no longer be official job titles in the federal government after the Office of Personnel Management announced on Friday it was consolidating 115 occupational series that it said are obsolete or redundant. 

The change will impact around 5,000 employees, the federal government’s human resources agency said, though the employees will be shifted into new job titles and may not see any impact to their pay. OPM said the consolidated roles, which will be absorbed into the many hundreds of remaining job series, will help streamline positions with low employment or obsolete duties, modernize job classifications, promote more transparent qualification standards and better support hiring based on skills rather than educational attainment. 

In the first phase of the overhaul, OPM said it focused primarily on job series with fewer than 100 employees across government, outdated roles that require non-transferable skills, little or no hiring activity over the last few years or no projected need for replacements based on workforce planning. It also identified roles that are duplicative with other occupational categories or that no agency identified a need to maintain.

The impacts will be felt across a wide range of governmental activities. The elimination of the “office automation clerical and assistance” role will affect the most individuals at 862. More than 600 “guides” throughout government — those who give talks, tours, explanations and provide other services to guests at parks and other sites of public interest — will be absorbed into the “general arts and information” job series. 

Just two staff involved in “bowling equipment repairing” — whose work includes “minor repairs to bowling approaches and pins” — will see their job series phased out. Many military bases throughout the country maintain bowling alleys on site. The vast activity at military sites account for additional job series the government no longer needs, in part due to the outsourcing of such work, including bakers, bartenders, meatcutters and waiters. Those roles will now be consolidated into the “general food preparation and serving” category. 

Some of the eliminated jobs no longer have any people working in them: the government currently employs zero elevator operators or film assemblers and repairers, and the titles will be abolished.

One federal HR official praised OPM for the changes, saying it made sense to generally clean up and simplify the list of federal roles and would significantly reduce back-end burdens when hiring for certain specialized or scientific roles. 

“It’s the most reasonable and data driven change we’ve seen [from OPM] so far,” the official said. 

OPM said the effort would bring “clarity and consistency” across the government and better support the needs of agencies. 

“The evolution of work across government, including new technologies, scientific advances, and shifting mission demands, has led many series to become low-use, outdated, or overlapping,” OPM said. 

It reminded agencies to follow all existing statutes on pay and grade retention, as well to adhere to their collective bargaining requirements. The agency said it would “provide comprehensive implementation guidance” to ensure a consistent approach across government, protect employee rights and minimize disruption. 

OPM acknowledged that employees and stakeholders would have questions about the changes and vowed to ensure a smooth transition. Some of the consolidated jobs require highly specialized skills and extensive hands-on training and those expectations will not change, it said. It will work with agencies to help them write clear position descriptions for specialty, mission-critical jobs. 

Some of the impacted jobs are technical or scientific in nature, such as for the government's nearly three-dozen zoologists or its more than 300 employees in fish and wildlife administration. Those employees will become general natural resources managers and biologists. The federal HR official said the more generalized categories will make it far easier for hiring personnel to determine whether an applicant meets minimum qualifications. 

As OPM stated, many of the consolidated job functions already appear to be waning in prevalence. The government will no longer hold a specialized title for its nine theater specialists and its lone remaining “coin/currency checker” — whose job is to visually examine finished coins for defects, discoloration or missing letters, as well as U.S. currency, stamps and bonds for any imperfections — will no longer have such a distinct title.