FedSmith

The landscape of federal employment is facing a significant shift. Early in 2026, the Office of Personnel Management proposed severe changes to how reductions in force are executed within federal agencies. Long story short, if a federal agency wants or needs to downsize, the process they go through will be dramatically different. This means the rules governing which federal employees are protected from layoffs are shifting beneath our feet, altering long-standing civil service norms.

When you retire from federal service, OPM (the Office of Personnel Management) does not finalize your retirement claim overnight. While your application is being processed, you receive an interim payment: a temporary monthly deposit that covers most (usually about 60 to 90%), but not all, of your expected pension. Once OPM completes your case, your full annuity begins and you receive a retroactive payment covering the difference for every month you were on interim pay.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has released new data showing that collective bargaining activities cost federal agencies at least $181.6 million during fiscal year 2024. Because some agencies did not submit the required information, the actual cost was likely higher. Much of that expense is tied to official time—a long-debated practice under which certain federal employees are paid by their agencies while performing union representational duties instead of their regular government work.

I am a huge fan of the G Fund in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). It is a great fund, but unfortunately, we see so many people approach retirement and abuse the G Fund in a way that just doesn’t make any sense. Depending on how you use it, you could end up doing much worse over time. Today, we are going to talk about the right way to use the G Fund to actually maximize your retirement and ensure you are not being too conservative or too aggressive.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) have issued a proposed rule to make it faster and simpler for agencies to fire federal employees for poor performance or misconduct. The rule, called Promoting Employee Accountability, would also retire the Douglas factors, a 12-item checklist MSPB has used for 45 years to decide whether a firing or other punishment was fair.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) marked what it called the “Last Day of Paper” this week, ending paper-based retirement processing for more than 95% of federal retirement applications after more than 65 years of manual paperwork. The milestone completes OPM’s transition to a fully digital retirement process built around its Online Retirement Application (ORA). OPM added that ORA has processed over 155,000 retirement applications during the past year.

When a retiree does not own a home, one major source of flexibility disappears. There is no large asset to liquidate, no equity to convert into care funding, and no ability to offset costs through a housing decision.

Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) participants may feel like their stock investments are on a roller coaster. The overall result has been favorable, but those with diversified investments may feel a sense of relief with the monthly changes now occurring. Volatility is the new normal this year. Here is how the core stock funds in the TSP have fared during the year’s first six months. The TSP’s core stock funds were split in June.

Federal employees spend years navigating a complex system of retirement benefits. The Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) form the backbone of that system, providing a pension, tax-advantaged retirement savings, and coordination with Social Security.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finalized a rule on June 30, 2026, that allows the agency to remove federal employees for serious misconduct that happens after they are hired, closing what officials described as a long-standing gap in the government’s ability to hold its own workforce accountable. The final rule, called Suitability and Fitness, takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.