Commerce and transportation departments top US federal vaccine mandate table

By on 30/11/2021 | Updated on 02/02/2022

Data released by the US Office of Management and Budget has revealed 96.5% compliance with President Joe Biden’s mandate for federal employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, with the Department of Transportation and the Department of Commerce top performers.

According to the data, these two top performing federal departments achieved over 99% compliance with the mandate – 99.6% for the Department of Transportation and 99.4% for the Department of Commerce.

Compliance is defined as the percentage of agency employees covered by a vaccination requirement with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, or with a pending or approved exception or extension.

Three other departments or agencies had compliance scores over 99%: the Agency for International Development (99.1%), Small Business Administration (99.1%), and the Office of Personnel Management (99.0%).

The lowest compliance level is recorded at the Department of the Interior (94.7%) and Department of Homeland Security (including the coast guard) at 95.1%.

See the full list of US federal department and agency COVID-19 vaccination rates

The data also ranked departments based on the percentage of their workforces to have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The Agency for International Development achieved the highest percentage of coverage (97.8%), while the Agriculture Department came bottom, with 86.1%.

Although the Department of Veterans Affairs had a 98.0% compliance percentage, it had a 87.8% vaccination percentage. Other agencies with a low vaccination percentage include the Social Security Administration (87.7%) and the Department of the Interior (88.3%).

In a statement, the White House said that 92.0% of federal employees having received at least one COVID-19 vaccination dose, adding: “Government has shown, these requirements work: they increase vaccination rates – leading to a safer, more productive, and efficient workforce. They’re good for workers, good for businesses, and good for the country.”

The deadline for federal employees to get vaccinated passed on 22 November, following the executive order signed by US president Joe Biden in September announcing the mandate. The mandate has since been challenged, and the White House has advised that agencies offer non-compliant federal employees a week of counselling to encourage them to get vaccinated, having warned of possible suspensions and removals for continued non-compliance.

However, it has been reported by Government Executive that the directors of the Office of Personnel Management Director, Kiran Ahuja, and the Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management, Jason Miller, have instructed agencies to wait until January 2022 to enforce non-compliance penalties.

The White House meanwhile said that it would continue to process vaccination information and exception requests from federal staff, including new hires. “Each step of this process will result in more Federal employees becoming vaccinated,” it said.

Full list of US federal department and agency COVID-19 vaccination rates

AgencyAgency-wide compliance percentageAgency-wide vaccination percentage
Agency for International Development99.1%97.8%
Department of Agriculture95.6%86.1%
Department of Commerce99.4%93.9%
Department of Defense96.1%93.4%
Department of Education98.2%95.0%
Department of Energy98.8%91.0%
Department of Health and Human Servicesiii98.8%96.4%
Department of Homeland Security95.1%88.9%
Department of Housing and Urban Development98.3%92.7%
Department of the Interior94.7%88.3%
Department of Justice97.4%89.8%
Department of Labor98.0%93.3%
Department of State97.4%96.1%
Department of Transportation99.6%90.6%
Department of Treasury98.3%91.5%
Department of Veterans Affairs98.0%87.8%
Environmental Protection Agency95.3%92.1%
General Services Administration98.9%92.9%
National Aeronautics and Space Administration95.6%90.7%
National Science Foundation98.6%96.2%
Nuclear Regulatory Commission97.6%92.4%
Office of Personnel Management99.0%90.7%
Small Business Administration99.1%90.0%
Social Security Administration95.0%87.7%

About Jack Aldane

Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.

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