Tracking President Joe Biden’s Cabinet and appointees

One of the president’s most significant constitutional powers is the ability to staff the top tiers of the executive branch with the advice and consent of the Senate. In an effort to evaluate the Biden administration over the course of its first year, Brookings is monitoring the Senate confirmations process in two ways: first by tracking key demographic data of these individuals through the first 300 days, second by tracking the pace of confirmations in major departments at the 100-, 200-, and 300-day marks. This information is placed in context by comparing it to Biden’s three predecessors: Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

• View data on the diversity of recent presidential administrations, by gender and race/ethnicity
• View data on the pace of confirmations for recent presidential administrations, in aggregate and by agency

Note that the data on this page only includes confirmations to the 15 departments in the line of presidential succession; this excludes U.S. attorneys, among others. The data will be updated with information from the Biden administration on a rolling basis. For a more detailed breakdown of specific positions and the individuals confirmed, please contact Kathryn Dunn Tenpas. Further notes and disclaimers on the dataset is available here.

This section displays information on Senate-confirmed appointees by presidential administration according to two key demographic factors: The first chart displays gender (via frequency of women appointees), the second displays race/ethnicity. The data is through the first 300 days of each administration. See full notes on the data here.

This section displays the frequency of Senate-confirmed appointees at the 100-, 200-, and 300-day marks within the first year of a presidency. The first figure aggregates these confirmations across the 15 departments in the line of presidential succession; below that is an agency-level breakdown in alphabetical order. The data will be updated with information from the Biden administration on a rolling basis.

Pace of Senate confirmations by agency

Note: The asterisk (*) by Biden’s name indicates that the data collection for his administration is ongoing.

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Notes

• Although newly inaugurated presidents are presented with the opportunity to fill roughly 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions across the federal government, the data on this page only includes confirmations within the 15 departments in the line of presidential succession; this excludes military and judicial confirmations, individuals being confirmed for seats on commissions, and U.S. attorneys, among others.
• The data will be updated with information from the Biden administration on a rolling basis.
• For the race/ethnicity data, U.S. Census categories were used. Due to insufficient information, the race/ethnicity of a small number of individuals could not be determined; these were classified as “Unknown.”
• Special thanks to Noah Montemarano for research assistance.

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