OPM’s new RIF rules took effect September 2: performance replaces seniority

1. Which rules apply to you

OPM published the final rule on August 3, 2026 at 91 FR 49178, and it took effect September 2. The dividing line is not when a RIF takes effect. It is the date the agency issues your specific RIF notice under 5 CFR 351.802. A notice issued August 31 is processed under the old rules even if you separate in December. A notice issued September 2 or later runs on the new ones.

That single date also decides where an appeal goes, which is covered in its own guide on the move of RIF appeals from the MSPB to OPM. Two rules, one effective date, and the notice in your hand tells you which world you are in. If you have a notice, find the issue date before you do anything else.

2. The new retention score

Under the old system, agencies sorted employees into tenure groups I, II, and III, then into veterans’ preference subgroups, then converted performance into extra years of service and subtracted it from the service computation date. Ranking came out as a date. Performance mattered, but only inside your already-determined group, and only by up to eight years of credit.

The revised rule discards that. Agencies now keep separate registers for competitive service and excepted service, and within each, rank employees by a plain point total.

The ratings used are your three most recent ratings of record from the four-year period before the agency issues RIF notices. Agencies may set a cutoff date after which no new rating counts, and your standing is frozen as of the date your specific notice is issued — so a rating that lands after the notice cannot change anything, in either direction.

The practical consequence is easiest to see in OPM’s own example from the final rule. Two employees, same tenure group and subgroup:

Twenty-five years of service difference, reversed by six rating levels. That is the entire policy change in one row, and OPM put it in the rule deliberately: the agency’s stated view is that the old formula gave performance “nominal credit but not meaningful priority.”

3. Compute your own

Enter your three most recent ratings of record and your preference category. The result is only meaningful in comparison with everyone else on your register in the same competitive level, but it tells you which end of it you are on.

4. What happened to veterans’ preference

Preference survived, but it changed shape, and reasonable people read the change differently. Under the old rules, preference was categorical: within a tenure group, every preference eligible outranked every non-preference eligible. Under the new rules it is 3 or 5 points added to a performance total.

OPM’s defense is arithmetic. On a 21-point scale, 3 points is 14.3% and 5 points is 23.8% — proportionally larger than the 5 and 10 points a veteran receives on the 100-point competitive examining scale. And because one rating level is worth only 2 points, a +3 preference outweighs a full rating level, while +5 outweighs two:

The counter-argument, made by many of the 721 commenters, is that preference is no longer categorical: a non-veteran with three Outstanding ratings (21) now outranks a disabled veteran with three Fully Successful ratings (14). OPM’s response is that 5 U.S.C. 3502 requires veterans be retained “in preference to other competing employees,” not that they always sit at the top of the register, and that the old rules already subordinated preference to tenure — a Group II veteran could be released before a Group I non-veteran.

What this means for you practically: if you are a preference eligible with mid-range ratings, your protection is real but no longer absolute, and your ratings now matter in a way they did not before. If you carry a 30% or higher compensable rating, verify that your agency has your correct preference category on file. VA rating questions belong on Warrior Disability; the retention consequence is here.

5. Bump and retreat are gone. What replaced them.

Bumping let a released employee displace someone in a lower tenure group or subgroup, at the same grade or up to three below. Retreating let them move into a position they had previously held, held by someone with lower standing. Together they produced chains: one abolished position rippling through a competitive area. For a senior employee, the combination was a strong shield.

Both are replaced by a single right of assignment, and every condition must be met:

• The position is in the same competitive area with the same type of work schedule.
• It is held by an employee with lower retention standing in the same tenure group.
• The assignment involves no reduction, or the least possible reduction, in pay rate.
• It is no more than three grades or grade intervals below your position — five for a preference eligible with a 30% or greater compensable disability.
• You are qualified for it, determined through a job-analysis-based assessment. An automated self-assessment cannot be the primary method. No new assessment is required if you held the same or a substantially similar position at the same grade within the past five years with a Level 3 or higher rating for that work.

Assignment rights are mandatory only for competitive-service employees with a current rating of Level 2 or higher. Agencies may extend comparable rights to excepted-service employees but do not have to.

Two other structural changes are worth knowing. If an agency establishes or materially modifies a competitive area within 90 days before issuing notices, it must get OPM approval in advance and explain the organizational basis — a guard against redrawing boundaries to reach specific people. And when an agency abolishes every position in a competitive area within 180 days, it may release employees without a register or assignment rights at all, with a simplified notice.

6. Who isn’t in the competition at all

The rule narrows who counts as a “competing employee.” Excluded entirely:

• Competitive-service employees serving an initial probationary period.
• Excepted-service employees serving a trial period.
• Anyone on a temporary or time-limited appointment of one year or less.
• Schedule C and Schedule G appointees.

An excluded employee has no retention score, no assignment rights, and can be separated, demoted, furloughed, or reassigned for a RIF reason without any of the register machinery. They do still get a modified written notice stating the action, the reasons, the effective date, a link to 5 CFR part 351, reemployment-rights information, and any appeal rights — unless the release is simply a temporary appointment expiring on its own terms.

One clarification that matters: a supervisory or managerial probationary period does not create the exclusion. If you have career tenure and are only on probation as a supervisor, you compete normally. The exclusion is for an initial probationary period on appointment. If you are unsure which you are serving, ask HR in writing today, not after a notice arrives.

7. A worked register, and what it reveals

Scores are abstract until you see six people ranked by them. This is OPM’s own illustration from the final rule, one competitive level, competitive service:

Four observations, each of which is the whole point of the rule.

Bennett, with five years of service and no preference, is safest on the register. Three Outstanding ratings and nothing else. Under the old rules Bennett would have been near the bottom.

Flores has eleven years, subgroup I, and better ratings than Evans — and is released first. Nineteen points against twenty. Two rating levels, spread across three years, outweigh eight years of service and a better tenure subgroup.

The 20-point tie is where the old factors reappear. Alvarez, Chen, and Diaz are all subgroup I, so service computation date orders them: 2014, then 2016, then 2019. Evans, tied at 20 but in subgroup II, falls below all three. Tenure and seniority still do work — but only after everyone above the tie has already been sorted.

Preference did its job without controlling. Alvarez at 5/4/3 scores 15 raw; the +5 puts Alvarez second. Without preference, Alvarez sits below Flores. But Bennett, with no preference at all, still ranks first. That is the trade OPM made, stated plainly.

The lesson for anyone with a notice: get the register. Your score alone tells you almost nothing; the distribution tells you everything. If one position is abolished, Flores goes. If two, Flores and Evans. A single rating level in either direction moves people across that line.

8. The retirement options a RIF notice opens

This is the part the news coverage skips. A RIF notice is bad news about a job. It is frequently good news about a pension, because involuntary separation unlocks retirement benefits that are not otherwise available. Check these in order before deciding whether to appeal, accept, or negotiate.

Discontinued service retirement

DSR pays an immediate, unreduced annuity if you are 50 with 20 years of service, or any age with 25 years, and the separation is involuntary and not for cause. No MRA+10 age reduction. FEHB and FEGLI continue into retirement if you meet the five-year rules. For a 52-year-old with 26 years, DSR converts a layoff into a pension that starts next month — an outcome that simply is not available to someone who resigns.

VERA, if your agency has the authority

Voluntary early retirement uses the same age-and-service thresholds and is often offered alongside a RIF to reduce the number of involuntary separations. Where both are available, compare them: VERA is voluntary and may come with a VSIP payment, while DSR requires the involuntary separation. The FERS supplement is payable under both once you reach MRA.

If you are short of those thresholds

With at least five years of creditable service you can leave the annuity in place and take a deferred annuity at 62, or at MRA with 10 years accepting the reduction. Taking a refund of contributions instead ends the pension entirely and is almost always the worse choice. Severance pay, if you are eligible, is not available to anyone eligible for an immediate annuity — so the DSR question has to be answered first.

And whatever you do, do not let the TSP decide itself. A loan balance becomes a taxable distribution about 90 days after separation, and the Rule of 55 turns on whether you separate in or after the year you turn 55. Both are covered in the five TSP mistakes.

9. Your first two weeks after a notice

• Find the issue date on the notice. Before or after September 2 decides both the rules and the appeal forum.
• Request the retention register and the records behind it in writing. You are entitled to the records pertinent to the RIF; ask for your competitive level, your score, and the ranking.
• Check the arithmetic. Are those actually your three most recent ratings of record? Is your preference category right? Is your service computation date correct? Scoring errors are the most common valid basis for challenge.
• Get a written retirement eligibility determination from HR, naming DSR, VERA, and deferred eligibility explicitly, plus your FEHB and FEGLI five-year dates.
• Ask whether the competitive area was created or modified within 90 days of the notices. If so, OPM approval was required.
• Calendar the appeal deadline — 30 calendar days — even if you expect to retire instead. See the appeals guide.
• Do nothing irreversible with the TSP until the retirement question is settled.

10. Frequently asked questions