The Federal RIF Rules Changed on September 2. What Actually Changed, and What to Do This Week.

By Maryam House, Founder & COO, ResumeYourWay INC

If the agency issued your specific RIF notice on or after September 2, 2026, you're working from a different rulebook than anyone whose notice was issued before that date. The date the agency issued the specific notice is the only thing that decides which set applies.

The rules for federal reductions in force were rewritten this summer. The final rule was published on August 3 and took effect on September 2. Another document appeared in the Federal Register on September 15. That one is a correction that restores two paragraphs to a definition in a different part of the regulations. It changes nothing about how a RIF is run. The change that matters already happened on September 2.

The date the agency issued your notice decides which federal RIF rules apply to you

OPM built the switch into the rule itself: "An agency that issued a RIF notice before the effective date of the rule must process the RIF under the regulations in effect when the RIF notice was issued. An agency that issues a RIF notice on or after the effective date must apply the RIF provisions as amended by this final rule."

Be precise about which date this is. It's not the date the RIF was announced. It's not the date your separation takes effect. It's the date the agency issued your specific notice.

In a RIF that was already running on September 2, notices the agency issued before that date stay on the old rules. And if no notice has been issued to you yet, any notice issued to you from now on falls under the new rules.

Your last three ratings are now the score

It's the first change named in the one-paragraph summary at the top of the rule. Under OPM's old rules, performance came last of the four retention factors. It's now the one that ranks you. The Defense Department has run its own performance-first system since 2017, so if you work there, check its rules too.

Your three most recent ratings of record are converted straight into points: seven for a Level 5, five for a Level 4, three for a Level 3, and zero for a Level 2 or a Level 1. The agency adds them up. That sum is your performance credit. Within your tenure group, the retention register is ordered by it, after any veterans' preference points are added.

Read that scale twice. A Minimally Satisfactory rating is worth the same as an Unacceptable one here, which is nothing. Somebody with three Fully Successful ratings scores nine. Somebody with two Outstanding ratings and one Minimally Satisfactory scores fourteen. The gap between a Level 2 and a Level 3 is the widest jump on the whole scale.

The ratings come from the four-year period before the agency issues its RIF notices, and an agency is allowed to set a cutoff date earlier than that, in which case the four years run back from the cutoff instead. So the four years don't always end on the date the notices were issued.

Missing ratings have their own arithmetic. If you have two ratings in the window, the agency averages them and uses that average as the third. If you have one, it multiplies that one by three. If you have none, it uses the modal rating for your pattern. In some rating systems, an agency can also add points for documented exceptional performance, but that is its own choice, it has to be set out in advance, and you shouldn't count on it.

Veterans' preference is points now, not a tier

Veterans' preference is still in the rule. What changed is how it works.

It's now points added to that score, rather than a separate tier that ranked every preference eligible above every non-preference eligible in the same tenure group. Five points if you are a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30 percent or more, three points for every other preference eligible employee, and none if you aren't a preference eligible. Military retirees count as preference eligible here only in limited cases, so check before you assume the points.

Both halves of this matter, and you need them together. OPM's preamble heading says the rule preserves veterans' preference as a substantial factor, and preference does still add points. It's also true that a non-preference eligible with a high enough score can now be retained over a preference eligible. Under the old rules, veterans' preference was ranked ahead of performance, so better ratings could not carry a non-preference eligible past a preference eligible in the same tenure group. OPM's own guidance takes up whether preference always puts a preference eligible ahead of every non-preference eligible, and its answer is no. The law behind RIF retention, 5 U.S.C. 3502, says preference eligibles whose performance hasn't been rated unacceptable are to be retained "in preference to other competing employees." Some commenters on the rule read that as always ahead of every non-preference eligible, and OPM disagreed. If you're a preference eligible and you're separated, demoted or furloughed for more than 30 days, take that question to a lawyer before your 30-day appeal window closes.

If you're a preference eligible, your ratings now decide where you stand, and your preference adds to them. We wrote about how veterans' preference works in federal hiring separately. That post covers hiring. This rule covers who is kept in a RIF.

Seniority only breaks a tie

Length of service only breaks a tie now, and it breaks it last. Two people with the same score after preference are separated first by tenure subgroup, and only then by service computation date, earliest first.

The old system that converted a strong rating into as much as twenty extra years of retention credit is gone. Years of service are years of service again.

OPM's public FAQ page on how performance is credited in a RIF still describes the old model, and it carries no date on it. It describes only the rules for notices issued before September 2. If your notice was issued on or after September 2, or you haven't had one yet, work from the new regulation.

Some people no longer compete at all

The rule pulls a group of employees out of the competition entirely. Employees serving an initial probationary period or a trial period, employees on a temporary appointment of a year or less, and Schedule C and Schedule G employees are not competing employees at all. In the excepted service, a time-limited appointment of a year or less is excluded too. An agency can keep one of them while releasing someone who does compete, and it doesn't have to work out their retention standing first.

Probation on a new supervisory or managerial job is not an initial probationary period, and it doesn't take a career employee out of the competition. If you were promoted into supervision recently and you're serving supervisory probation, you still compete. If you're serving an initial probationary period and supervisory probation at the same time, you're still excluded.

People in the excluded group still get a written notice if they are separated, demoted, reassigned, or furloughed for more than 30 days for a RIF reason, unless the appointment is simply running out on its own terms. That notice has to say plainly that they were not ranked on a retention register.

Bumping and retreating are gone, replaced by one assignment right

Bumping and retreating are gone. OPM's own answer to whether the rule eliminated them starts with one word: yes. One assignment right replaces both.

If you're in the competitive service and your current annual rating of record is Level 2 or better, the agency has to offer you an assignment rather than separate or furlough you, when a qualifying position exists. The position has to be held by someone with lower retention standing in your own tenure group, in the same competitive area, on the same kind of work schedule, and no more than three grades below yours, or five if you are a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30 percent or more.

Watch the grade arithmetic. Those are grades or the equivalent grade intervals, so on a two-grade-interval ladder three intervals is six actual grades, not three. That reaches further down than the number three suggests. If your organization uses pay bands, the reach is an equivalent band or one band lower, or up to two lower for a preference eligible with a service-connected disability of 30 percent or more, as the agency determines.

Excepted-service employees have no assignment right unless their agency has chosen to give them one. A Level 1 rating takes the right away entirely.

When the agency tests whether you qualify, it has to use something built on a job analysis, and it can't rely mainly on an automated self-assessment. A structured resume review is one of the assessments the rule names by name. The agency doesn't have to give you that assessment if, in the five years ending on the day you receive your notice, you held the same position, or one at the same grade or pay level with substantially the same duties, series, qualification requirements and conditions, and were rated Fully Successful or better for that work.

So in a real RIF, the document describing your work can be the thing an agency reads to decide whether you qualify for the job it is moving you into.

That review is about a federal job. If a RIF could send you into a private-sector job search, you'll need a different document, a private-sector resume, and the Essential Federal Transition Package is our GS-5 to GS-13 build for that move, with supervisory, GS-15 and SES versions above it.

The notice is still 60 days, and most of what it lists isn't new

The notice period didn't change. Nothing in the final rule touches the section that sets it. OPM restated it on the day the new rule took effect: a competing employee generally gets at least 60 days of specific written notice, and never fewer than 30 even when OPM approves a shorter period.

The contents changed in a few places. Your notice has to show your competitive area and competitive level, your veterans' preference subgroup, your tenure group and subgroup, your service date, and your three most recent ratings of record from the last four years, plus a link to the regulations and how to get at the agency's records. It also has to tell you about your appeal right to OPM, including the deadline and the electronic filing system.

Most of that list was required before September 2. The old notice already gave your competitive area and level, your subgroup, your service date and your ratings, and it told you where to inspect the regulations and records. The new one adds your tenure group and subgroup, swaps the place to inspect the regulations and records for a link and access directions, and names OPM, not the Merit Systems Protection Board, as where you appeal. The notice hands you most of the inputs to your own score.

Two kinds of notice can leave out your ranking details: one telling a non-competing employee they were never ranked, and one telling you that your whole competitive area is being abolished. Both still have to state the action, the reasons for it and its effective date, the regulation link and records access, reemployment information, and any appeal rights you have. If an agency uses the provision for eliminating every position in a competitive area within 180 days, it can release people without ranking anyone, and it must not apply assignment rights, because no positions in that area will remain.

Once you have a specific notice you can ask to see the complete retention register, including the names of the other employees on it, so you can see how the agency ranked you against them. You can also see the registers for other positions that bear on your assignment rights. Before a notice, that particular right hasn't switched on yet, though other access routes like the Privacy Act are untouched.

Your standing is fixed as of the day you receive the notice, and an amended notice that only moves the effective date later doesn't require the agency to re-run the register. The agency still has to correct any error it finds in your standing, and fix any RIF action that error affected.

The appeal goes to OPM, and the clock is 30 days

If you're separated, demoted, or furloughed for more than 30 days, your RIF appeal now goes to OPM instead of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and you have 30 calendar days from the effective date of the action to file it. If your notice was issued before September 2, your appeal still goes to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Note which date starts that clock. Your retention standing is fixed on the day you receive the notice. The appeal window runs from the effective date of the action, which in the ordinary case is at least 60 days later.

Calendar days, not business days. The filing is electronic, through the system named on OPM's website, and an appeal counts as on time if it is filed by 11:59 p.m. Eastern on the thirtieth day. If the last day lands on a weekend or a federal holiday, it moves to the next workday.

You carry the burden. Beyond showing you filed on time and that OPM can hear the case, you have to show, more likely than not, two things together: that the agency broke a statute or an OPM regulation, and that the break is what cost you. Showing a mistake isn't enough on its own. You have to show the mistake changed the outcome. That's why the retention register matters so much, and why asking for it early is worth doing.

The appeal is decided on the written record unless OPM decides a hearing is necessary and efficient. If you were picturing a hearing with witnesses, adjust that picture. Plan on the written record being the whole case. When the agency responds to your appeal, you get 15 calendar days to reply. The reply can't raise new errors unless they rest on something first disclosed in the agency's response, or OPM allows it for good cause, so put every error you already know about in your first filing. Either side can ask OPM to reconsider within 30 calendar days of the initial decision, and OPM decides whether to reopen it. If you win, the relief is correction of the action, back pay, interest and reasonable attorney fees, and it doesn't include compensatory damages.

The rule also says a party cannot obtain judicial review of a decision under this subpart, and it shuts the negotiated grievance and arbitration route for the RIF itself. Complaints that belong to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an Inspector General, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service or the Office of Special Counsel are expressly preserved.

One flag, because it could cost someone a remedy. OPM's own summary document says something different about the union route than its regulation does. The regulation shuts the grievance route for RIF appeals. OPM's guidance attachment says a bargaining-unit employee covered by a grievance procedure that does not exclude RIF generally has to use it. Those can't both apply as written. The FAQ attachments that came with that guidance in OPM's September 2 memo say the published rule, the regulations and the statutes control. But OPM's rulemaking record also says the rule doesn't retroactively undo existing union agreements, and it leaves disputes about them to the labor-relations forum. If you're in a bargaining unit, talk to your union representative or a lawyer before you choose a route, and do it right away. The OPM appeal window is 30 calendar days from the effective date, and any grievance runs on your union agreement's terms, not on OPM's 30 days. Don't let a deadline pass while that gets sorted out. Which route fits your case is a question for them, not for us.

What this change does not do

A quick read can take this change further than the text goes.

It didn't eliminate veterans' preference. It converted it to points, so a preference eligible can now be released ahead of a non-preference eligible in the same tenure group who still scores higher after the points are added.

It didn't remove seniority. Service still counts, last, and only to break a tie.

It didn't shorten the notice period. It's still generally at least 60 days.

It didn't abolish RIF appeals. The forum moved from the Merit Systems Protection Board to OPM, with a 30-day electronic filing window.

It doesn't reach back to notices issued before September 2. The date the agency issued the specific notice governs.

The September 15 Federal Register document is a correction to a definition, not a new rule.

Separately, Congress barred reductions in force starting November 12, 2025, and two later funding laws moved the date that bar ran to, first to February 13 and then to April 30, 2026. That bar has ended. Narrower limits are still in law. For example, fiscal 2026 Defense Department funds can't be used to carry out a reduction in force at a public shipyard, and fiscal 2026 ends September 30. The VA funds in the law that created that bar also can't be used to cut staffing of the Veterans Crisis Line or any other VA suicide prevention program. If Congress has named your program, ask whether a limit like that covers you.

What to do this week

None of this requires a notice to be useful. Four things, in this order.

Pull your three most recent ratings of record and your service computation date. Once you have them, you can compute your own performance credit. If a rating you expected is missing from the record, resolve it now rather than after a notice arrives. A rating only counts if it was actually issued and is on record.

If a notice arrives, first find the date the agency issued it. That date tells you which rulebook applies and whether your appeal goes to OPM or the Merit Systems Protection Board. If it's an amended notice that only delays the effective date of an earlier one, go by the date the earlier notice was issued. Your standing is locked as of the day you receive it. Then find the effective date, because that is what starts your appeal clock. If you're in a bargaining unit, ask your union representative or a lawyer which route applies before you file anything.

Work out the grade band your assignment right actually covers. Three grades or three intervals below your position, five if you are a preference eligible with a compensable service-connected disability of 30 percent or more, same competitive area, same work schedule. Knowing that range in advance tells you which positions to be watching, and whether you are in a pay-band system where a different rule applies.

Get your documents in order before you need them, not after. A RIF notice generally gives you at least 60 days. Translate the record first: a grade into a title, a program into what it produced, and each result into money, headcount or outcomes a private-sector reader can weigh. Do that work before the clock starts, not inside it.

The federal sources behind this article

The rules above come from these official documents.

• The RIF final rule, 91 FR 49178 (August 3, 2026)
• The RIF appeals rule, 91 FR 49230 (August 3, 2026)
• The August 25, 2026 corrections to those two rules: 91 FR 54794 and 91 FR 54796
• The September 15, 2026 correction, 91 FR 58363
• OPM's September 2, 2026 memo to agencies, with its RIF Basics and FAQ attachments
• OPM's FAQ page on how performance is credited in a RIF, which still describes the old model
• 5 CFR 351.802 as it read before September 2, in the January 1, 2026 edition of the Code of Federal Regulations
• The laws behind the RIF bar and the narrower limits: Public Law 119-37, Public Law 119-75, Public Law 119-86, Public Law 119-60 and H.R. 6500 as passed, now Public Law 119-103

This article is general information, not legal advice. For your own case, talk to a lawyer, or to your union representative if you have one.

Where we can help

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