Trump has fired an alarming number of federal workers and now we have an exact number
WASHINGTON – More than 211,000 people have been forced out of federal jobs since President Donald Trump took office in January. and cracks are showing in the government’s ability to provide people with needed services, according to a new analysis from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization focused on better government.
The group has been following Trump’s policy. decimation of the federal workforcewhich was composed of around 2.3 million civilian employees in 2022. It found that another 10,295 federal employees have left or been kicked out of their jobs in the past month.
A few factors triggered the latest round of people losing their jobs. Most were affected after the government shutdown began in early October, when Trump arbitrarily eliminated their jobs in the departments of Commerce, Treasury, Education, Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security. Some were cut by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Some opted for accelerated retirement from the Department of Defense.
The Department of Defense has been bleeding personnel more than any agency. More than 61,600 people have left or been expelled in the last nine months. Some 6,000 of them left in the last month.
The Treasury and Agriculture departments have also lost huge numbers of people, with more than 31,000 and 21,000 expelled this year, respectively.
The volume of federal employees being pushed out is not the only alarming aspect of how Trump is hampering the government, said Max Stier, executive director of the Partnership for Public Service. The administration is carrying out this process “in a totally non-strategic manner.”
“It’s really ‘fire, fire, fire,’ rather than ‘ready, aim, fire,’” Stier said. “Every corner of our government has experienced a substantial loss of critical talent and, as a result, our government’s performance across the board is declining.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
via News
Cracks are already showing in the government’s ability to provide people with the services they depend on with hundreds of thousands less staff.
When Texas was hit by deadly floods In July, key positions were vacant at National Weather Service offices in the state, raising questions about staffing shortages affecting the flood forecast. The loss of doctors, nurses and support staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs has added wait times for veterans seeking care in areas such as cardiology, gastroenterology and oncology. The Social Security Administration’s ability to process claims has supposedly slowed down by 25% amid staff shortages and delays.
Still, Stier warned, most of the damage Trump is doing to the government is to its long-term capacity. Today’s federal employees report feeling demoralized by the Trump administration and are currently working without pay amid the shutdown. These are the same people needed to recruit the next wave of federal workers, such as air traffic controllers, food safety inspectors and VA doctors.
Between Trump’s hiring freezes, attrition, and people being forced out of their jobs, that preparation for the next wave of hiring just isn’t happening.
“If we look at the president’s past, I want to say he has been a master at bankruptcy,” Stier said. “In essence, you are bankrupting our government by spending our resources now and not investing in the resources we need for the future.”
The person driving Trump’s efforts to hollow out the government is Russ Vought, the powerful behind-the-scenes director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is one of the architects of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s far-right policy plan for Trump’s second term. Expelling career public officials and replacing them with politically appointed officials is critical to the goals of Project 2025.
An OMB spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on how the government is supposed to operate with 10% fewer employees.
But a senior administration official had to tell News themezone: “Much better.”
“In essence, it is bankrupting our government.”
– Max Stier of Association for Public Service
Vought He hasn’t been shy about his plans for a second Trump administration. He is singularly focused on cutting federal spending, expanding the limits of Trump’s executive power (even if it violates the Constitution), and making federal employees so miserable that they will quit their jobs and leave the government a shell of its former self.
If that sounds dramatic, believe it: “We want bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a private speech in 2023. discovered by ProPublica.
“When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly seen as the villain. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t enforce all the regulations against our energy industry because they don’t have the financial ability to do that,” he said. “We want to subject them to trauma.”
Contrary to the idea that Vought is driving out “Washington bureaucrats,” the vast majority of federal employees work outside the DC area. More than 80% of them They are scattered throughout the country and the world.
Nearly a quarter of them They are also veterans.
Stier said the public needs to understand that what is happening is “horrible mismanagement” that will cause pain long beyond Trump’s term.
“Donald Trump will likely be gone by the time the American public foots the bill,” he said. “We usually don’t recognize what we have until we lose it.”