President Trump is moving swiftly to shrink the U.S. federal government — the nation’s largest employer — a move that he has said will slash wasteful spending and make the nation’s civil workforce more responsive to his administration’s dictates.
Mr. Trump has described the federal government as “bloated” and filled with “people that are unnecessary.” While the federal government has inefficiencies, as do all large and complex organizations, some experts are pointing out that the government workforce has grown little since 1980, and that some agencies and services had already been grappling with staffing shortages, including the Veterans Health Administration and the FAA’s air traffic control centers.
“There’s no indication that the government is particularly bloated in terms of numbers of federal workers — that number hasn’t really changed over the past decades,” Elizabeth Linos, the Emma Bloomberg associate professor of public policy and management at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told CBS MoneyWatch. “The problem we were facing over the past decades isn’t one of bloat, but of vacancies.”
As Mr. Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency push to slash spending, here’s what to know about the nation’s federal workforce and the potential impact on Americans of scaling back government.
What are Trump and Musk doing to shrink the federal workforce?
Working with billionaire Elon Musk, Mr. Trump has offered a “deferred resignation” plan to more than 2 million federal employees, that would grant pay through the end of September while not working, in exchange for agreeing to step down. A federal judge on Tuesday cleared the program to proceed after it had been paused.
About 75,000 workers have accepted the offer, and the Trump administration said that the deferred resignation program was closed as of 7 p.m. Feb. 12. The offer excludes members of the armed forces, U.S. Postal Service workers, and those who work in jobs related to immigration enforcement and national security.
In another move aimed at remaking the federal workforce, Mr. Trump this week also signed an executive order to reduce the number of government employees and limit hiring.
Is the federal workforce growing?
As Mr. Trump and Musk charge ahead, some policy experts note that the federal workforce has decreased relative to the U.S. population when compared with earlier decades. The upshot: There are fewer government workers providing services to more U.S. residents than in prior years, according to new research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The federal workforce has waxed and waned over the years, but its size today puts it on the same footing as during the 1980s, when the U.S. population was about 220 million. Today, there are more than 330 million U.S. residents.
How big is the federal workforce?
The U.S. has more than 2.4 million federal workers, excluding those who work for the U.S. Postal Service, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (As a self-funded agency, the USPS relies on sales of stamps and other products and services to support its operations.)
“In absolute terms, the federal workforce is slightly smaller than it was 50 years ago, even though the U.S. population has increased by two-thirds during that time period,” noted Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who managed the Clinton Administration’s National Performance Review, an effort to cut government spending in the 1990s, in a Jan. 28 report.
In the 1940s, the federal workforce represented 4.5% of non-farm workers, a share that’s dwindled to 1.5% today, according to CEPR’s analysis.
How efficient is the federal workforce?
There’s no overarching measure of the efficiency of the federal workforce, Linos of Harvard’s Kennedy School noted. But agencies typically review their own operations to identify gaps that affect their ability to provide services.
The federal workforce’s efficiency should be measured on whether agencies are delivering the services they’ve been tasked to handle, she added. In recent years, many agencies have added data-driven measurements to determine whether they are providing those services to Americans.
For instance, the Social Security Administration’s most recent annual performance report identified long wait times for callers as a trouble spot, and added that it would like to shave the hold times to 12 minutes on average from its 34 minute on-hold time for fiscal year 2024. But that “aspirational goal” was being evaluated amid a hiring freeze, the report added.
The Social Security Administration, which last year served a record 68 million beneficiaries, is working with its smallest staff in 50 years, former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said in November congressional testimony.
To be sure, the U.S. government suffers from various types of inefficiencies, with a 2024 U.S. Government Accountability Office report estimating that as much as $521 billion annually is lost to fraud, or about 8% of federal spending.
Federal spending also has ballooned in recent years, although much of the increase is due to higher spending on Social Security and paying interest on federal debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
What agencies have the most federal workers?
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has the most federal workers, with more than 487,000 employees, according to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, or OPM. That’s followed by the Department of Homeland Security, with more than 222,000 workers; and the U.S. Army, with 221,000 employees.
Some of the agencies that have been targeted by Mr. Trump are relatively small by comparison. For instance, the president is considering an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, which has about 4,200 employees.
Where are federal workers based geographically?
Only about 7% of federal workers are located in Washington, D.C., proper, according to a 2024 Congressional Research Service report. But when adding the federal workers located in Virginia and Maryland, the larger Washington, D.C., metro area represents about 20% of the entire government workforce.
Roughly 80% of federal workers are located outside the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and civil service employees are employed in every U.S. state, the CRS report noted.
While Washington, D.C., proper has the largest number of federal workers, at about 162,000, other states aren’t far behind: California employs about 147,000 federal workers, while Texas has about 130,000.
Additional states with sizable federal workforces include Florida, at about 94,000, and Georgia, with almost 80,000 federal workers, the analysis found.
What does the typical federal worker earn?
The average annual salary of federal workers tops $106,000, Pew Research Center found, citing OPM data.
Federal salaries skew into the six figures because many civil service workers hold college or professional degrees, and are highly trained. The largest share of federal workers are employed in the medical field — physicians and nurses who work for the VA, for instance.
Others are professionals such as accountants and attorneys who might be able to earn more if they worked for private employers. For instance, the Commodity Future Trading Commission, which regulates futures contracts and other derivatives, pays its employees an average of $235,910. About 40% of its workforce is comprised of attorneys, Pew found.
How could a much smaller federal workforce affect Americans?
Services could degrade if enough federal workers are cut or resign, Harvard’s Linos said. But Americans would still expect a certain level of service, such as getting their benefits paid on time or getting a passport on a timely basis.
To address that issue, the federal government could turn to private-sector contractors to pick up the slack, she added. “That’s more costly — you end up paying a higher wage to private sector workers with less accountability,” she noted.
A hit to public services could heighten negative public sentiment about the federal government, Linos added. Public trust in the federal government has declined for decades, falling from about 77% of people in the 1960s who trust the government to do what is right to about 22% today, according to the Pew Research Center.
“We tell people the government is bloated, the day-to-day experience gets worse, and that feeds the narrative that the government is useless,” she said.
