The U.S. Secret Service aims to expand its workforce by 20 percent over the next three years as it prepares for a presidential election cycle and global events requiring heightened security.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The U.S. Secret Service is planning to hire approximately 4,000 new employees by 2028, a significant expansion that would increase the agency’s workforce by about 20 percent and push total staffing levels past 10,000 for the first time.
The hiring push, which comes ahead of a presidential election year and the Olympic Games, is outlined in an internal plan led by Deputy Director Matthew Quinn, according to reporting by The Washington Post. The effort is designed to address longstanding staffing shortages that officials say have strained the agency’s ability to meet expanding security demands.
Under the plan, the Secret Service would grow its special agent workforce from roughly 3,500 to about 5,000. The agency also intends to add hundreds of officers to its Uniformed Division, increasing that force to around 2,000, while hiring additional support personnel across operational and administrative roles.
The initiative follows an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to reach a 10,000-employee benchmark over a roughly decade-long period ending in 2025. That effort faltered amid leadership turnover, disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and hiring restrictions during the Obama administration. Despite offering some of the most generous financial incentives among federal law enforcement agencies, the Secret Service struggled to meet recruitment and retention goals.
“Our mindset is, we aren’t going to pay our way out of this,” Quinn said. “We can’t create enough incentives to negate the fact that we’re working our people very, very hard.”
Quinn, a longtime Secret Service official who returned to the agency in May after several years in the private sector, said he and Secret Service Director Sean Curran have made hiring a top priority, second only to the agency’s protective mission. He added that senior administration officials have expressed support for the expansion.
“The protective mission has expanded,” Quinn said. “Our numbers are low to meet those needs. We have to achieve what we said we were going to do 10 years ago. We’ve got to achieve it now.”
As part of the push, the Secret Service has revamped its recruitment process. In November, the agency held its first accelerated hiring event, allowing candidates to complete multiple assessments over several days. Those evaluations included physical fitness testing, security interviews, and full polygraph examinations.
Delisa Hall, the Secret Service’s chief human capital officer, said those assessments historically stretched over months. Of nearly 800 applicants who attended the first accelerated event, about 350 advanced to the next stage of the hiring process.
“It’s becoming evident that this may be our new normal to push applicants through,” Hall said.
Officials said the agency has already reduced the time from application to job offer to less than a year, down from 18 months or longer, and hopes to shorten the process by an additional four months. In the past, lengthy delays led some candidates to withdraw or accept offers from other agencies with faster hiring timelines.
Hall said recruitment efforts are focused on military veterans, law enforcement professionals, and college athletes, and that the agency is maintaining closer contact with applicants to prevent attrition during the process.
The hiring surge reflects broader efforts by the Secret Service to stabilize its workforce and prepare for a period of heightened operational demands, as officials seek to close staffing gaps that have persisted for more than a decade.
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