The Office of Personnel Management proposed Oct. 24 to get rid of nearly 50 federal job classifications that are underutilized by agencies or outdated when compared with industry standards.
“These series selected for cancellation have approximately 25 or fewer incumbents governmentwide, and the work covered can be classified to other existing occupational series,” Kimberly Holden, deputy associate director for talent acquisition and workforce shaping at OPM, wrote in a memo to HR directors.
“Additional considerations for cancelling the proposed occupational series include the work is not agency-specific or agency mission critical work. We are not proposing to cancel occupational series whose work is so specialized that it is not classifiable to any other series or which have individual occupational qualification requirements.”
Jobs that are approved for cancellation do not simply disappear, but rather the employees that are currently or would perform those jobs are classified under a new series in the same job family.
OPM proposed the following 47 job classifications across both white collar and labor occupations for removal:
- 0309 - Correspondence Clerk Series
- 0313 - Work Unit Supervising Series
- 0319 - Closed Microphone Reporting Series
- 0322 - Clerk-Typist Series
- 0392 - General Telecommunications Series
- 0394 - Communications Clerical Series
- 0642 - Nuclear Medicine Technician Series
- 0698 - Environmental Health Technician Series
- 0804 - Fire Protection Engineering
- 0808 - Mining Engineering
- 0958 - Employee Benefits Law Specialist
- 1051 - Music Specialist
- 1054 - Theater Specialist
- 1056 - Art Specialist
- 1087 - Editorial Assistance
- 1107 - Property Disposal Clerical and Technician
- 1147 - Agricultural Market Reporting
- 1163 - Insurance Examining
- 1321 - Metallurgy
- 1658 - Laundry Operations Services
- 1725 - Public Health Educator
- 1730 - Education Research
- 1815 - Air Safety Investigating
- 1850 - Agricultural Warehouse Inspection
- 2110 - Transportation Industry Analysis
- 2135 - Transportation Loss and Damage Claims Examining
- 2144 - Cargo Scheduling
- 2161 - Marine Cargo
- 3106 - Upholstering
- 3511 - Laboratory Working
- 3602 - Cement Finishing
- 3605 - Plastering
- 3606 - Roofing
- 3802 - Metal Forging
- 3808 - Boilermaking
- 3809 - Mobile Equipment Metal Mechanic
- 4104 - Sign Painting
- 4416 - Offset Platemaking
- 4417 - Offset Press Operating
- 4616 - Patternmaking
- 4805 - Medical Equipment Repairing
- 4850 - Bearing Reconditioning
- 5313 - Elevator Mechanic
- 5736 - Braking-Switching and Conducting
- 5737 - Locomotive Engineering
- 5738 - Railroad Maintenance Vehicle Operating
- 7402 - Baking
Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.
