AFSA NEWS 78 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The Myth of Merit: Insights from AFSA’s RIF Survey Following the State Department reductions in force (RIFs) on July 11, AFSA invited its members to participate in a survey to gather data about those who were affected. Altogether we heard from 250 respondents, 212 of whom affirmed they had received a RIF notice. Eighteen were eliminated for other reasons (e.g., not State Department, not Foreign Service, already retired), leaving a total of 194 State RIF respondents. All data is self-reported, and AFSA is unable to independently verify the responses. The survey does not include Civil Service RIFs, which exceeded 1,000 people and had a substantial effect on numerous bureaus and offices. Neither does it include many broken detail assignments (upward of 200) or the followon impact of posts and bureaus that have lost employees scheduled to rotate into their new positions this summer. Demographics. Of the 194 respondents, 96 are female, 96 are male, and the remainder did not specify. Thirteen identified as Black (7 percent), 17 identified as Asian (8 percent), 18 identified as Hispanic (9 percent), 131 identified as white (68 percent), six identified as multiracial (3 percent), and the remainder had other responses. Twenty self-identified as veterans. Workforce Distribution. Among respondents, 166 are generalists and 26 are specialists. This is a much higher percentage of generalists than found in the broader State population, where the usual breakdown is roughly 60/40 percent between the two groups. Among the generalists who responded, 26 were consular coned, 40 were economic coned, 20 were management coned, 48 were public diplomacy (PD) coned, 30 were political coned, and the remainder had other responses. Compared with the breakdown of the actual generalist population, the number of consular respondents was lower (16 percent of survey respondents versus 20 percent of the overall workforce), management respondents were also slightly lower (12 percent of survey versus 15 percent overall), the number of political respondents was quite a bit lower (18 percent of survey versus 27 percent overall), the number of economic respondents was slightly higher (24 percent of survey versus 19 percent overall), and PD was several points higher (29 percent of survey versus 19 percent overall). The higher numbers for economic and PD officers are consistent with the offices that were eliminated, which were largely economics and energy offices together with the public affairs sections in several bureaus. Among the specialists, 10 were diplomatic technology (DT; 38 percent of the respondents versus 17 percent of the FS population), five were office management specialists (OMS; 19 percent versus 13 percent), and seven were security engineering officers (SEO; 27 percent versus 8 percent). The remainder were spread among several other specialties. These suggest that the numbers in DT and SEO were disproportionate to the specialist population, but it should be noted that the number of specialists who responded to the survey was low, so the results are based on limited data and may not accurately reflect the broader FS population. In terms of grade distribution, 23 were Senior Foreign Service (OC, MC, and CM; 12 percent of survey versus 7 percent in the FS population), 48 were FS-1 (25 percent of 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Generalist Cones: RIF vs Overall FS Population Consular Political Management Public Diplomacy Economic RIF Survey FS Overall Gender Distribution of RIF Respondents Unspecified 1% Female 49.5% Male 49.5% Lorem ipsum Race Distribution of RIF Respondents White 67.5% Hispanic 9.3% Asian 8.8% Black 6.7% Other/ Unspecified 4.6% Multiracial 3.1%
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