The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has finalized a rule eliminating the long-standing “time-in-grade” requirement that forced most federal employees to wait 52 weeks in a position before becoming eligible for promotion to the next pay grade.
OPM Director Scott Kupor announced the change Monday, saying the agency had removed what he called “the historically anti-merit principle of gating promotions for top performing employees based upon their time in seat.” In a statement posted to social media, Kupor said, “Federal employees should be rewarded for what they can do, not for how long they’ve been on the job.”
Kupor also published a Substack post explaining the reasoning behind the rule. In it, he described a hypothetical new federal employee who masters the job within six months and outperforms coworkers, only to be blocked from promotion because a regulation dating to the 1950s required a set amount of time in the role regardless of performance. “Not 52 weeks of results. Just 52 weeks on the calendar,” he wrote.
Under the prior regulation, federal employees generally could not be advanced to a covered position at GS-6 or above without first completing 52 weeks in a position no more than one grade lower, or two grades lower for certain two-grade-interval lines of work, according to the Federal Register. The new final rule removes that requirement entirely.
Employees remain subject to all existing occupational qualification standards and any additional job-related requirements set by their employing agency, according to the rule text published in the Federal Register.
OPM summarized the change in a social media post: “OPM has finalized a rule removing the 52-week time-in-grade requirement for covered promotions to GS-6 and above. Qualified employees can be considered sooner, while agencies continue to apply job-related standards and merit procedures.”
