Staffing up President Trump’s administration has been drastically slower than any of his three immediate predecessors, according to data collected and analyzed by a group of academics at the White House Transition Project.
“At this point since the inauguration, the average administration would have filled about 21 percent of those critical leadership positions in the government necessary to lead the government,” the authors of the analysis wrote. “And though President Trump and the Senate majority have far fewer positions to stand up than previous administrations, they still have only completed around 10 percent of the total necessary to stand up the government.”
The analysis found that not only is the administration behind in the number of positions already filled to this point, the Trump team is also behind in its pace of placing nominations and vetting documents in the pipeline, likely meaning they are not in a position to staff numerous remaining vacancies in the government quickly.
The analysis compiled data from the transitions of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s presidencies to create an average model of how quickly a transition is likely to unfold.
The pace of the transition even drew the notice of Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rove was critical of the understaffing, saying, “Leaving vacancies invites potentially embarrassing problems. If something goes wrong, the bureaucracy could blame the absence of leadership, leaving President Trump to take the heat. Cabinet secretaries could become overwhelmed trying to manage their massive departments with only a handful of personal aides. That leads to mistakes, burnout and unnecessary turnover.”
As just one example of the staffing shortage, the web page that lists the leadership team of the Department of Labor showed 39 total vacancies out of 81 leadership positions as of April 12. Out of five positions under the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Labor, only one was filled.
