Source: Niskanen Center
by Gabe Menchaca
“Underlying every federal program are federal workers; underlying every federal worker is an obscure taxonomy that defines their job. Every year, when it hires a couple hundred thousand people, the U.S. federal government sends millions of signals about itself to the job market, its own workforce, and the broader country. A cursory glance through its job postings reveals some of the most obvious ones: that federal employment is narrow, bureaucratic, procedural, and intelligible only to insiders. It prioritizes and selects for task specialists rather than outcome specialists.” (05/19/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/classification-rules-everything-around-me