The Invisible Presidential Appointments: An Examination of Appointments to the Department of Labor, 2001-11

In this article we examine what we call the president's invisible appointments. We designate Senior Executive Service and Schedule C appointees as invisible because, in lieu of a scandal, these appointees serve in the bureaucracy, generally with significantly less direct attention from the press or scholars. In addressing the invisible appointees, we use new data from an ongoing research project that collects and codes data from the résumés of political appointees in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. In this article we examine data from the résumés of appointees serving in the Department of Labor during these two administrations. We describe the characteristics presidents consider when making appointments, explain which factors are most important for which positions, and compare the results to existing expectations about the factors presidents consider when making appointments.