- Only 1 in 94 whistleblower disclosures were investigated in 2025.
- Investigation rates have fallen 88% since 2018.
- Complaints of retaliation and other prohibited personnel practices are now at a 14-year high.
In 2025, the federal government’s primary whistleblower oversight agency investigated just 1 in 94 disclosures it received, an 88% collapse in investigation rates since 2018. The decline isn’t an accident. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has been lowering its own referral targets, with plans to formally investigate as few as 20 cases in FY 2026. Meanwhile, complaints of federal workplace retaliation and other prohibited personnel practices (PPPs) hit an all-time high of 6,572, up 64% in a single year.
This report compiles 14 years of data from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in one place, including OSC’s newly released partial data for 2025.
The Black Hole: 2025 Is the Worst Year on Record for Whistleblower Investigations
When a federal employee blows the whistle to OSC, it reviews the whistleblower’s disclosure and decides whether to formally refer it to the relevant agency head for investigation. That referral is the mechanism that compels agencies to investigate, produce a report, and submit findings to the President and Congress. It is the backbone of the disclosure system.
That backbone has collapsed.
In FY 2018, OSC referred 139 disclosures for investigation out of 1,559 received, a referral rate of 8.9%. By FY 2025, with disclosures surging to 2,535, referrals had dropped to just 27, a rate of 1.1%.
The decline did not happen overnight. Referrals peaked in FY 2018 and have trended steadily downward since. But the collapse accelerated dramatically beginning in FY 2022, when referrals fell to 27 and have stayed at or near that level even as disclosures more than doubled.
The Flood: Complaints Hit an All-Time High
The disclosure collapse is happening alongside an unprecedented surge in complaints of prohibited personnel practices. In FY 2025, OSC received 6,572 new complaints of prohibited personnel practices—shattering the previous record of 4,168 (FY 2018) by 58%.
When only one percent of whistleblower disclosures are investigated, the federal oversight system isn’t just backlogged—it has functionally collapsed. We are seeing a record-breaking surge in complaints of retaliation and other prohibited personnel practices, yet the mechanism intended to protect the public interest is effectively being shuttered. This creates a ‘black hole’ where government wrongdoing can flourish without accountability.
-Federal employment attorney Justin Schnitzer
After a pandemic-era lull (FY 2020–2022), complaints have accelerated sharply: rising 36% from FY 2022 to FY 2023, 30% from FY 2023 to FY 2024, and 64% from FY 2024 to FY 2025. The timing of the most recent spike coincides with the DOGE-driven deferred resignation and workforce reduction programs, which affected hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
While complaints have surged, favorable outcomes have flatlined. OSC achieved 397 favorable outcomes in FY 2025, consistent with prior years (393–450 range over the past five fiscal years). For every federal employee who received relief, approximately 16 others filed a complaint and received none.
The Agency Is Choosing to Investigate Less
The decline isn’t simply the result of being overwhelmed. OSC’s own FY 2025 Performance & Accountability Report shows the agency has been actively lowering its formal referral targets from 60 in FY 2024, to 25 in FY 2025, to a planned 20 in FY 2026. As complaints surge to record levels, the agency responsible for protecting federal whistleblowers is formally committing to doing less.
The Decline in Context: Referral Rate Over 14 Years
Viewed as a simple percentage, the collapse is stark. The share of whistleblower disclosures that OSC refers for formal investigation has fallen from a high of 8.9% in FY 2018 to just 1.1% in FY 2025 — an 88% decline in the investigation rate.
The processing speed data, at first glance, looks like a bright spot: OSC processed 89% of PPP complaints within 240 days in FY 2025, the highest rate in the dataset. But context matters. Much of this “efficiency” reflects rapid closures at the intake stage rather than deep investigation. Despite processing a record 6,210 PPP cases, favorable outcomes actually declined from 450 in FY 2024 to 397 in FY 2025. On the disclosure side, substantiated findings dropped to 30 in FY 2025, down from 34 in FY 2024 — fewer confirmed cases of wrongdoing despite far more reports coming in.
Methodology & Data Sources
This report compiles data from 14 years of publicly available U.S. Office of Special Counsel annual reports and Performance & Accountability Reports (FY 2012–FY 2025).
A note on disclosure referrals: The “referral rate” throughout this report refers specifically to disclosures formally referred by OSC to agency heads for investigation and report — the mechanism by which OSC compels agencies to investigate and report findings to the President and Congress.
This report was compiled by The Law Office of Justin Schnitzer, a federal employment law firm that represents federal employees in EEOC, MSPB, whistleblower, and other legal matters nationwide.
The full dataset is available as a public Google Sheet.