The Secret Service is racing to bulk up before what some of its own people are calling 2028's "Armageddon," marked by the US election and the first US Olympics in more than 20 years. The agency plans to hire about 4,000 employees by then—an expansion of roughly 20% that would compensate for retirements and push its workforce past 10,000 for the first time, the Washington Post reports. Deputy Director Matthew Quinn is leading the push to grow the special agent corps from about 3,500 to 5,000 and increase the Uniformed Division to around 2,000 officers, with more support staff as well.
The goal is to shore up an agency stretched by an expanding protective mission, staff burnout, and a wave of expected retirements. Whether the Service can actually hit those numbers is an open question. A previous decade-long attempt to reach 10,000 employees fell well short, despite hefty bonuses. Former officials point to a dearth of qualified candidates; stiff competition from other agencies, especially immigration enforcement; and lengthy hiring and training pipelines that can take more than a year. Even with an accelerated hiring event in November that compressed physical, security, and polygraph assessments into a few days, only about 350 of nearly 800 candidates advanced.
Quinn insists standards will not be relaxed, rejecting internal talk of trimming investigative training to focus only on protection. Instead, officials say they have cut the timeline to a job offer from 18 months or more to under a year and hope to shave off several more months. The agency is aggressively recruiting from the military, law enforcement, and college athletics, and has locked in 42 training classes at the federal law enforcement academy in Georgia for fiscal 2026, even as that campus is crowded with new hires for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.
The stakes for 2028 are high. A large cohort hired after 9/11 is nearing retirement, and roughly a third of the workforce could be eligible to leave before the campaign season kicks into full gear. With Trump unable to run again, both parties are expected to field wide primary fields, increasing the number of protectees. The Service will simultaneously coordinate security for the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles. "I don't care how successful we are," Quinn told the Post, "it's still going to be a rough summer."
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