For a White House that likes to celebrate its business acumen and smart hires, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has a striking number of key economic jobs unfilled right now.
Vacancies stretch across agencies from the Internal Revenue Service to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, both of which are without permanent leaders. Open roles include ones that haven’t been filled, and others created after the administration pushed out top leaders or reshuffled incumbents.
Out of the 25 top jobs at Treasury, two are vacant and seven officials are serving in an "acting” capacity, according to the department’s organizational chart. At the the Commerce Department, the ratio is even higher, with six out of the 17 key officials in an acting status, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, the head of the IRS, Billy Long, left after just two months in the post. Seven people, including Long, have served as IRS commissioner in 2025 alone, according to the agency’s website. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is currently leading the tax agency in an acting capacity.
All of this risks leaving the White House short of personnel to put its sweeping plans into practice. That includes following up on more than 100 executive orders signed by Trump this year, and fleshing out regulations tied to the tax and spending bill passed in July. The clock is ticking, since midterm elections in little more than a year could hinge on the success of Trump’s economic agenda.
Some policy experts also point to the danger of a black-swan event — like a bank failure, a bond-market tantrum or a sudden economic downturn — where the White House could get caught unprepared if important public offices lie vacant.
Michael Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said the large number of open economic jobs is "not good” if there’s an economic calamity.
"Outside of a crisis, it is harder to say if it makes a difference,” he said. "So much of the policy process in this administration is just the president.”
It’s not uncommon for some key roles to remain unfilled in the first year of a new administration, as agencies ramp up hiring and the Senate works its way through a backlog of nominees.
During the former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration many top economic roles took months to fill, including, for example the Treasury under secretary for international affairs and its general counsel. Some officials in both the Trump and Biden administration worked in the building as an advisers in the interim before they were confirmed.
But under Trump, top officials have left or been forced out just months into into his second term. Trump fired the top official at the BLS in July after a weak monthly jobs report, accusing her of political bias without providing evidence — and there are lots more shortfalls at the key data agency.
The pace of approval for political appointees across the federal bureaucracy for the first 200 days of Trump’s second term is slightly ahead of the comparable period in Biden’s presidency and Trump’s first term, according to data from the The Brookings Institution. But the 98 nominees approved by Aug. 6 lags behind the more than 230 who were confirmed at that point during George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations.
Republicans earlier this month upended the Senate’s rules to allow the confirmation of dozens of certain nominees at once, instead of holding individual votes on each person.
"In just eight months, President Trump has overseen the most dramatic economic transformation in modern American history,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an emailed statement. Trump and his administration have "already passed historic working-class tax cuts, slashed cumbersome regulations, and used tariffs to overhaul global commerce and reshore critical supply chains.”
The Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.
The personnel churn doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon.
One agency that’s gotten the undivided attention of the Trump White House when it comes to staffing matters is the Federal Reserve. This week Stephen Miran joined its board — requiring him to temporarily vacate his position as head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and leaving the White House down a top economist.
The former deputy secretary of the Treasury, Michael Faulkender, quit the administration abruptly in late August. The White House is poised to nominate the Treasury’s chief-of-staff to the number two job at the International Monetary Fund, leaving Bessent without two top aides.
The upheaval isn’t confined to economic posts. The National Security Council has seen something similar, as Trump keeps firing aides targeted by his MAGA allies on the grounds that they weren’t loyal enough to the president’s agenda. So-called loyalty tests have been a key part of the hiring process during Trump’s second term.
It’s all quite different from his first administration, when the fastest churn came inside the White House itself. Back then, the president cycled through various chiefs of staff, press secretaries, lawyers and national security advisers, often firing them in extremely public fashion. His first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, learned he was being replaced on an airport tarmac.
This time around, the White House staff has remained remarkably stable — while much of the personnel turnover has happened in the ranks of senior executives at agencies, many of whom were already confirmed by the Senate. That applies to Faulkender, and to others like former CDC Director Susan Monarez, who was confirmed in late July only to be fired roughly a month later.
"Asking people to leave so quickly after they have been confirmed is so shocking to me,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "Now, they have to start all over.” The confirmation process can take months, from nomination by the White House to hearings and then the actual vote by senators.
Shortstaffing in major economic jobs could jeopardize Trump’s promise to deliver a "golden age.” The U.S. economy right now is a mixed picture. Inflation has abated but not as much as shoppers would like. Unemployment is low but creeping up. It’s taking longer for college-educated Americans in particular to find work, while consumer confidence fell back in September -especially among middle and lower-income Americans, who remain concerned about prices and jobs.
A White House official said the president is deeply involved in economic policy matters and has the people around him who he trusts, said the official, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
"The so-called economic geniuses in the Biden-Yellen administration sparked widespread inflation and crashed the economy,” said Jason Miller, a former senior official to Trump’s campaigns who continues to informally advise the White House. "I’ll take the successful team put together by President Trump and Secretary Bessent.”
Trump’s allies and advisers know they need the economy in a good spot by next fall’s midterms, if Republicans want to hold onto control of the House of Representatives — which they failed to do at the equivalent point of Trump’s first term.
That’s one reason why the president has remained so focused on the make-up of the Fed Board and pushed so hard for interest-rate cuts. His aides view lower borrowing costs as the way to kickstart a struggling housing market and deliver on a metric of economic improvement.
"People have to think it’s working, if we are going to keep the House and pick up seats in the Senate,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally. That could apply to issues like the border or crime, he said, and also "things like the money in my pocket and in my family budget and my chance to have a good job.”
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