I have received this question multiple times from readers interested in joining the Foreign Service, and the simple answer is: I don’t know.

For the last several months there has been a government wide freeze on hiring, and at this point it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. What this means is job announcements have been suspended, and onboarding has stopped.

Within the State Department, MED and a few other specialists have been given exemptions to onboard people already in the pipeline, but these have been rare. In April, a few medical staff were onboarded during a very small specialist only orientation class. No class is being hosted in the normal July timeframe, and it remains up in the air if there will be anyone onboarded in the regular September window. Again, this is really just for folks sitting around on the Register that had been in process before the hiring freeze went into effect, so if you are wondering if they will announce job openings anytime soon…I doubt it.

That said, when hiring opens back up again, due to natural attrition and the various deferred retirement offerings that were taken, I imagine we will have quite a bit of need in the future, so keep checking the Foreign Service website and sign up for job notification alerts.