Keith Sonderling

31st Secretary of Labor — Department of Labor

Signature issue: Workforce policy — and a second hat as Acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics

Scoreboard tally

Wins, pending items, and setbacks on this profile are tallied from published scoreboard entries — never set by hand. The tally begins with the first reviewed weekly entry that scores this official.

Role status — October 2026: Sonderling is the incumbent Secretary of Labor, the 31st to hold the office (dol.gov biography). His path was the longest in this cabinet class: Deputy Secretary, then acting Secretary from April 20, 2026 — the day Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned amid a Department of Labor inspector-general investigation, which she denied wrongdoing in — then nominated on June 29, 2026, confirmed on September 30, 2026, by 47–41, and sworn in on October 2, 2026. Since June 2026 he has also served as Acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics. Status dot is yellow: the narrowest confirmation margin in the cabinet class, at the end of a five-month acting-and-nominated path, at a department whose prior secretary left under an investigation — a contested start on the face of the record. No criticism of Sonderling’s own conduct was carried in this research pass, and none is asserted here.

The double hat is itself part of the record: the Secretary of Labor simultaneously acting as the government’s ethics director is an arrangement this chronicle notes as a fact of the current roster, sourced to the department’s own biography and the research pass.

Verified channels:

Personal X: @Sonderling47 (PERSONAL account — labeled as such; no dol.gov cross-link exists)
Agency X: @USDOL
Agency YouTube: U.S. Department of Labor (youtube.com/USDepartmentOfLabor)
Agency site: dol.gov (official biography verified there)

Video sources: QUIET–MODERATE. Sonderling is one of the cabinet’s quieter officials on video: Labor Department channels carry his remarks, and C-SPAN’s unedited record — hearings and testimony — is often the fullest source. Full-remarks search order for this site: White House → C-SPAN → committee → agency.

Why he matters to this chronicle: Sonderling owns the labor side of the Gov Efficiency & Workforce scoreboard, and his profile closes the administration’s longest cabinet vacancy story of 2026: a department that lost its secretary to an investigation in April did not have a confirmed successor until October. How the department performs under a secretary who arrived by that path is a standing scoreboard question.

Sources (Oct 2026): Research Cluster A (2026-10-18), citing the dol.gov official biography (confirmed September 30, 2026, 47–41; sworn October 2, 2026; the deputy → acting → nominated path; the OGE acting role); Roster Audit (2026-10-18) on Chavez-DeRemer’s April 20, 2026 resignation and her denial of wrongdoing; Audit Sprint B (2026-10-18) on his channels.