More on the Hiring Pause That May or May Not Refresh

This is the latest I received from one of my sources..
I asked the question “so it’s the folks covered in FF retirement and who have fire quals that are not being affected?”

Also I got an answer as to “why it’s so hard to count.”

It does get a little fuzzy around the edges. Clearly fire positions with FF retirement coverage are not in any kind of pause. Right now, even some fire-funded positions such as Fire Cache positions are not affected. No current non-fire employee is impacted except in terms of applying for a position for competitive promotion and/or lateral…opportunities may decrease as vacant positions are held vacant due to funding concerns.

Figuring out how many vacancies are out there in the process of being filled is not that simple. For a lot of hiring, for various reasons, an SF-52 is no longer submitted to initiate a hiring action, and is only generated and entered into the system once a tentative selection is made. This cuts down on a tremendous amount of unnecessary front-end work when for whatever reason a hiring manager ends up not making an offer. Intake portals have replaced the early submission of 52s in these scenarios. Also, hiring managers are doing more backfilling at the same time they are selecting for vacancies, so there are often additional hires being done that were not listed in the initial portal inventory. Bottom line is there is no one system to accurately account for how many hires are in process, and no way to quickly assess this, hence the “pause”.

Anyone with more information, please weigh in.