In a previous post, I emphasized OPM’s steady focus on using every tool at its disposal to help the federal government recruit the best of America’s workforce. By eliminating unnecessary constraints, maximizing existing authorities, and paving new hiring pathways, we are exploring all levers to ensure the federal government can successfully recruit from a broader swath of the country’s top talent. At OPM, we believe greater connectivity between the private and public sector worlds – including greater movement of talent between the two – would be of significant value. Breaking down more of these barriers is critical.

In support of this, last week, President Trump further bolstered this effort in a Presidential Memorandum approving the use of critical position pay to support investment programs related to national security.

Critical Pay for Critical Talent

In the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990, Congress recognized the inflexibility of standard federal pay limits and created 5 U.S.C. § 5377 (Pay Authority for Critical Positions) to give agencies more flexibility to recruit exceptionally qualified people for mission-critical positions. Specifically, this statute grants OPM the authority to approve requests from agencies to set pay rates as high as level I of the Executive Schedule, which in 2026 is $253,100.

But in the 36 years since this statute was passed, even this impressive salary has not kept pace with that paid for certain exceptional skills in the private sector. Thankfully, Congress anticipated this potential issue and granted the president the ability, in rare circumstances, to approve an even greater rate of pay. Keeping with our focus of using every tool at our disposal to benefit the American people, we are the first administration to seek and gain the president’s approval to do so.

Insourcing from the Private Sector: Critical Talent for Critical Minerals

Working closely with our agency partners across the administration who are recruiting exceptionally skilled investment, engineering, financial, and legal professionals needed to execute investment programs to expand the nation’s capacity in critical minerals and other components of our strategic supply chains, we recognized this critical pay authority would be necessary. To support this effort, President Trump has now directed OPM to oversee the use of critical position pay for up to 400 positions (the statutory cap is 800) and to approve rates of basic pay of up to $400,000.

This authority will enable agencies such as the Department of War, Department of Commerce, the Development Finance Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, and others to recruit the expertise required to advance priority investment programs essential to our national defense and economic security. Further, this authority will be paired with the pathway first carved out in Tech Force, which would enable individuals to take a leave of absence from their private sector employer, become full-time government employees, and retain their deferred compensation while doing so.

This program will make it easier to attract great talent from the investment industry by dealing with many of the structural compensation-related challenges that have plagued previous recruitment efforts. For too long, the federal government has tried to shore up critical supply chain deficiencies in industries such as semiconductors, shipyards, and critical minerals without enough people with dealmaking experience in these strategic industries. Under President Trump, that is changing. Deploying this talent in support of the important national goal of broader supply chain and energy independence will be a boon to the American people.

More Public-Private Exchanges: Tech Force and NASA Force

Other examples of how we are expanding the federal government’s recruiting aperture include our Tech Force and NASA Force recruiting initiatives.

As you may know, Tech Force is a cross-government initiative to recruit top technologists to modernize the federal government. We have now hired roughly 200 technologists across over 20 agencies and onboarded the first technologist directly from an industry partner.

This week President Trump recognized the criticality of these skills by directing OPM in an executive order to expand Tech Force’s recruiting efforts around cybersecurity specialists. Building on the program’s momentum, we will continue hiring throughout the year with renewed emphasis on cyber and software development skill sets.

NASA Force is a more recent initiative we launched with NASA to support their recruiting of top aerospace engineers and to increase NASA’s ability to deliver on its ambitious mission by bringing more mid-level private sector talent into government. NASA has already made one major job announcement, and more are on the way. Further, we continue to make progress on building a system, similar to Tech Force, whereby engineers from the private sector can do stints of service at NASA, working on their most exciting programs.

Pounding the Rock

Key government initiatives are made possible by getting the right talent in the right seats. Sometimes that means identifying barriers to the federal government’s ability to tap into the full gamut of American talent and ingenuity. With President Trump’s support, whether it is critical pay authority, clarifying outside compensation rules, or building public-private exchanges, we will continue to pound the rock – into submission.