Office of the Historian

123. Memorandum From the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Administration (Dikeos) to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management (Moose)1

Washington, May 6, 1977

SUBJECT

  • Employment Ceilings

We have been informally advised by OMB that the government-wide employment reduction package will go forward to the President [Page 502] shortly. The OMB recommendation to the President for the Department’s full-time permanent employment ceiling will probably be as follows:

Full-Time Permanent Employment Ceilings

FY-1977 FY-1978
Total (including supplementals) 22,920 23,041
Proposed reduction −300 −375
End-of-year employment ceiling 22,620 22,666

This represents a further reduction of 50 from the earlier OMB International Affairs Division proposal.2 The figures also do not reflect 76 reimbursable positions (mostly AID transfer of functions and program build-up) which should be added by OMB to our total.

It appears that an employment ceiling reduction of this magnitude would require abolishing approximately 200 positions currently authorized to the bureaus.

Our full-time permanent employment as of March 31 was 22,673. We should have end of April employment figures within two weeks.

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Records of the Under Secretary for Management (M), 1977–1978, Box 1, Chron May 1977. No classification marking.↩
  2. Not found.↩