When people talk about the government, they often mean two very different groups. Elected officials set direction and answer to voters at the next election. Civil servants, from scientists and auditors to park rangers and benefits clerks, carry out the laws day to day and are meant to do so regardless of which party is in power.
This guide compares how each group gets and keeps its jobs, introduces the political appointees who link them, traces how the merit system replaced the spoils system, and lays out the rules and the debate over accountability.
Representatives serve two-year terms, senators six, and the President four, limited to two terms. Most civil servants are hired through competitive examination or rating and ranking of qualifications, with preference for veterans, and are paid on the General Schedule or similar systems. Others are hired into the excepted service, which has its own rules, such as for attorneys, intelligence officers, and certain specialists. After a probationary period, career employees gain protection against removal without cause.
The Hatch Act of 1939 bars most federal employees from partisan political activity on duty, from using their positions to influence elections, and from soliciting political donations, while the President and Vice President are exempt. Both elected and appointed officials file financial disclosures and face gift and conflict-of-interest rules, overseen by the Office of Government Ethics for the executive branch and by ethics bodies in each chamber of Congress. Whistleblower laws protect employees who report wrongdoing, and revolving-door rules limit lobbying after leaving office.
Each new President fills about 4,000 positions, listed in the Plum Book, including cabinet secretaries, agency heads, ambassadors, and policy aides. Roughly 1,300 require Senate confirmation, and many sit vacant or are filled by acting officials for long stretches. Appointees serve at the President's pleasure and leave when the administration ends. Senior career executives in the Senior Executive Service work directly under them, bridging policy and operations.
Supporters of strong civil service protections say they keep government competent and nonpartisan, prevent a return to the spoils system, and protect employees who resist improper orders. Critics, including those who use the term deep state, say protections make it too hard to remove poor performers or to carry out an elected President's agenda. In 2025 the administration reduced the federal workforce by hundreds of thousands through buyouts, layoffs, and attrition and moved to reclassify policy-influencing career jobs so they could be filled and removed more easily, steps challenged in court by unions and others.
Elected officials hold office because voters chose them, and their authority comes directly from the Constitution or state law. Civil servants are employees hired to carry out the programs those officials create and fund. Both take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, but their duties differ. Elected officials decide policy and are expected to be partisan, while career employees are expected to serve any administration impartially. The same divide exists in states and cities, where governors, mayors, and council members oversee state and local workforces.
For much of the nineteenth century, federal jobs went to party loyalists under the spoils system, turning over with each election. After Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, shot President Garfield in 1881, Congress passed the Pendleton Act of 1883, creating a Civil Service Commission and requiring merit hiring for a small share of jobs, later expanded to most of the workforce. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 replaced the commission with the Office of Personnel Management, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Learn how the workforce organizes in government employee unions, see the numbers in the federal workforce by the numbers, or explore the fight over job protections in Schedule F and the fight over the civil service.