Workforce

Smiling recruits at a basic wildland fire training course in Idaho: the Department of the Interior employs thousands of people to manage wildland fire across the country. (Photo courtesy BLMIdaho)

Quick Facts

5,600: Total expected number of Department of the Interior and Tribal employees within the wildland fire management program in 2023.
126: Types of positions involved in wildland fire incidents.

Hiring

In 2023, we employed a total of 5,600 federal and more than 900 Tribal wildland firefighters and support personnel during the year. These employees did not all work at one time, due to the seasonal nature of fire activity. For example, agencies in the Southwest finalize seasonal wildland fire hiring in late winter or early spring because their peak fire activity typically occurs in March through May, before monsoons usually reduce fire activity. Agencies in the Northwest can hire seasonal wildland fire employees into May and June, as fire activity in the Northwest typically begins in May, June, or July, and can last into the fall.  

You can visit the National Interagency Fire Center website for a listing of fire positions that are currently open. 

Wildland Fire Hiring Event

The U.S. Department of the Interior held a career fair in Denver, Colorado, to fill wildland firefighter positions across the western U.S. for the 2024 fire year on April 6-7. Learn more!  

Workforce Reforms

The Interior Department is continuing its efforts to reform our wildland fire workforce. Supported by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, this initiative will give our employees greater stability, enable them to grow in their positions, and improve the Department's ability to address more extreme wildfires and meet the year-round needs for wildland fire management activities. These reforms represent a generational change for our wildland fire workforce.

FY 2024 Budget and Permanent Pay Solution

The President’s FY 2024 budget includes crucial reforms to invest in and support our federal wildland firefighters. 

The cornerstone of the reforms is a permanent pay increase for our federal and Tribal firefighters. Additionally, the president’s FY 2024 budget request invests more in wildland firefighter mental and physical health and wellbeing, improves their housing options, and increases capacity by expanding the number of permanent firefighters.

These reforms are urgently needed and build on the temporary pay increase provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Collectively, they will reduce the strain on our current and future workforce.

The permanent pay reforms require authorizing legislation. The Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Personnel Management developed a comprehensive legislative proposal for Congressional consideration. We remain committed to working with congressional leaders on this crucial proposal. The temporary pay supplements currently in effect are expected to run out after November 17, 2023. For additional details, see our 2024 workforce reform FAQs.

Increasing Pay

We have implemented temporary pay improvements for federal wildland firefighters in coordination with our counterparts at the USDA Forest Service and Office of Personnel Management. The pay increases began to appear in paychecks the week of July 11, 2022. We are also developing a long-term solution for future years. On June 21, 2022, The Biden-Harris administration shared the Interagency Implementation Of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Section 40803 FAQs.

This improvement builds upon President Biden's 2021 initiative to support federal wildland firefighters and ensure they receive a minimum of $15 per hour. Under that initiative, approximately 3,500 of Interior's roughly 5,000 wildland firefighters received $7.6 million in additional monetary recognition.

Wildland Firefighter Occupational Series

In 2022, a new occupational series was created for federal wildland firefighters, as directed by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. For the first time in 50 years, the GS 0456 Wildland Fire Management Occupational Series defines the unique duties of wildland firefighters and provides clear career advancement details.
 
The Interior and Agriculture departments are now working on series implementation. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law requires opportunities for federal wildland firefighters to elect into the new series. These frequently asked questions address the elect-in process, and Interior held two internal town halls to educate the wildland fire management workforce about the series, the elect-in process, and related information.

Further, at the Interior Department, subject matter experts in wildland fire and human resources are meeting regularly to craft standard position descriptions. At the same time, Interior will conduct a job analysis for fire dispatch work.

Permanent Positions

The Interior Department is continuing to transition to a more permanent workforce capable of fire response and mitigation work on a year-round basis. This work is supported by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided new funding to support the conversion of 1,000 positions across the Interior Department and USDA Forest Service.

Since 2020, the Interior Department has increased permanent wildland fire positions by over 500. Currently, 71 percent of the Department's wildland fire personnel are in permanent positions.

Health and Wellbeing

The Interior Department and USDA Forest Service are developing a joint behavioral health program to provide support tailored to the unique experiences and needs of our firefighters. The program will establish year-round prevention and mental health training, provide post-traumatic stress care, enhance capacity for critical incident stress management, and create a new system of trauma support services with an emphasis on early intervention. 

The U.S. Department of Labor announced changes to its Office of Workers' Compensation Program to assist federal firefighters with certain occupational illnesses by making it easier for claimants to file claims and by improving transparency in how claims are processed.

Training

Along with our partners at the USDA Forest Service, we are developing a strategy to provide expanded training, education, and experiential learning opportunities to improve emergency response skillsets, business acumen, and land management competencies.

Harassment-free Workplace

Ensuring that our employees have a safe and professional environment in which to work is not only the right thing to do, it’s the law. The Department of the Interior prohibits offensive sexual or non-sexual harassing behavior against any employee, intern, volunteer, contractor or other non-Federal employee, visitor, or other member of the public. The Department also prohibits adverse treatment of employees because they report harassing conduct or provide information related to such complaints. Read the full anti-harassment policy and explore other employee resources at doi.gov/employees.

Hiring Practices

The lengthening of fire seasons into fire years creates significant challenges for staffing an adequate response to wildland fire. Seasonal firefighters have long been the backbone of the wildland fire management, but current personnel policy limits seasonal positions to six months or 1,040 hours of employment. In addition, the long days needed to manage wildland fire often mean seasonal employees work more hours in six months (2,500 hours) than their full-time, non-fire colleagues work in an entire year (2,080 hours). We’re exploring partnerships that could increase our ability and capacity to hire additional people whenever the demand for firefighters exceeds staffing levels.

Staff in the Office of Wildland fire have also been exploring ways to develop shared hiring certificates for the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture. This would enable more efficient hiring and sharing of qualified firefighters and would reflect the true interagency nature of wildland fire management.

Controlling Risk

Human safety is always our highest priority: no structure or resource is worth a life. We  emphasize the importance of safety in all our required training programs and in daily briefings that take place during incidents. We closely document and track people’s qualifications before assigning them work. We enforce medical standards for physically demanding positions to ensure people won’t endanger themselves or their colleagues. We adjust our tactics to make sure firefighters don’t directly engage a wildfire when risks can’t be mitigated to an acceptable level. We study and learn from our mistakes and look for ways to share that information widely. 

The wildland fire community offers a number of online resources where people can pursue additional training and learn through the experiences of others:

• Joint Fire Science Program
• National Advanced Fire & Resource Institute
• National Wildfire Coordinating Group 
• Wildfire Lessons Learned Center

Join Us!

Are you interested in working in wildland fire? Learn more about how to begin a career in wildland fire or explore the many careers available in the Department of the Interior. Additional information about careers in fire, including a list of open positions on USAJobs, is also available from the National Interagency Fire Center.