By March 24th, two months into his administration, President Biden had obtained the confirmation of just 27 people. That puts him slightly ahead of where Donald Trump was at this point, but behind Barack Obama. America has far more political appointees in its federal government, some 4,000 in all, than any other developed democracy, according to David Lewis, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University. No one ever really stops to wonder whether, if so many roles can sit empty, all these jobs are needed in the first place.

The Senate confirmed Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to head the Department of Labor on Monday, securing Biden’s 15th and final secretary for his initial Cabinet. The Senate began considering Biden’s Cabinet picks at a slower pace than his recent predecessors. Trump’s refusal to concede delayed the transition and early disputes over who would control committees slowed down the vetting and confirmation of his nominees.

 President Joe Biden’s Cabinet is nearly complete with the confirmation of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Monday. But the work of building his administration is just beginning, as Biden has hundreds of key presidential appointments to make to fill out the federal government. Of the 790 being tracked by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan good-government group, 23 appointees have been confirmed by the Senate, 39 are being considered by the Senate, and 466 positions have no named nominee.

The U.S. Senate has scheduled a floor vote on Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s nomination to be President Joe Biden’s labor secretary on March 22. According to the Center for Presidential Transition, Walsh is one of just three of Biden’s 15 Cabinet secretaries who had yet to be confirmed as of Friday.

As President Biden continues to fill out key positions in his administration, there is another category of nominees experts hope the new president will soon take up: inspectors general. There are currently over a dozen IG positions with acting heads and no nominees yet. The positions are critical to ensure ethical, effective operations at a time when agencies are disbursing billions of dollars in pandemic relief.

Here’s a look at Biden’s first 50 days and how it compares to his most recent predecessors. In a snapshot: twice as many executive orders as any of his immediate predecessors (according to the Partnership for Public Service), less legislation, about average on nominations sent to the Senate and an approval rating higher than Trump but lower than Obama.

President Joe Biden’s Cabinet is taking shape at the slowest pace of any in modern history, with fewer than a dozen nominees for top posts confirmed more than a month into his tenure.

Among Biden’s 23 nominees with Cabinet rank, just 11 have been confirmed by the Senate, or about half. According to the Center for Presidential Transition, about a month into their first terms, the previous four presidents had 84% of their core Cabinet picks confirmed.

President Biden has submitted more nominees to the Senate — but received fewer confirmations — than recent presidents, data from the The Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition shows.

Why it matters: The new president is facing a pandemic without a surgeon general or head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he confronts an economic crisis without his leaders at Labor or Commerce and domestic terrorism is on the rise with no attorney general, said Max Stier, the partnership’s president and CEO.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, 64-35, to lead the Energy Department. After her confirmation, Granholm tweeted that she’s “obsessed with creating good-paying clean energy jobs in all corners of America in service of addressing our climate crisis” and “impatient for results.”

A month after the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, nominations for dozens of top Pentagon jobs have yet to be announced — and it may be quite some time before those roles are filled with confirmed individuals.

Across the entire Biden administration, 58 individuals have been nominated for the roughly 1,250 Senate-confirmed spots as tracked by the Partnership for Public Service, according to Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former defense official who is now vice president of research and evaluation with the organization. That’s more nominations than the previous four presidents have had 34 days after taking the oath of office, she said.