IRS Backtracks on Thousands of Customer Service Job Postings (1)

Thousands of IRS customer service jobs posted on the federal hiring website have closed within days of being made public.

The IRS posted 4,500 contact representative positions at offices across the country, according to USAJOBS, the US Office of Personnel Management website for federal jobs. Contact representatives help taxpayers with administrative and technical problems either over the phone, in person, or through written correspondence.

Those jobs are now closed. A web link that led to 500 contact representative jobs and another that led to 3,000 contact representative jobs now both say “job canceled” in the overview. There are still 150 open tax examining technician positions and one position for strategic advisory counsel. Those jobs both say they close Aug. 7 and Aug. 6, respectively.

It’s unclear what caused the early closures. Treasury Department and IRS spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for comment about the job postings or their closure. An OPM spokesperson Friday said agencies are allowed to cancel job announcements any time and referred questions to the IRS.

• President Donald Trump extended a federal government hiring freeze that started when he took office until Oct. 15, according to a July executive order.
• The IRS 100,000-person workforce has shrunk by about a quarter since Trump’s initiatives to downsize the government. The agency said in its 2026 budget request that it needed to hire 11,000 customer service workers to maintain its phone lines and taxpayer services.