Elon Musk has been taking a scattershot approach to firing federal employees, mostly focusing on probationary workers who have limited civil service protection.
But today a memo went out from the Office of Personnel Management that made things more official. It demanded that all agencies submit plans by March 13 for "large scale reductions in force" that would be implemented over the following 30-60 days. A second round of plans is due by April 14.
But it's kind of odd. The memo has a bunch of sound advice—don't break the law, collaborate with DOGE, focus on workers who are typically deemed "non-essential" during government shutdowns—but it leaves out one thing: how big should the layoffs be? 5%? 10%? More? What counts as "substantial"?
There's no guidance whatsoever on this. No suggestion of how many people they want gone. Each agency decides for itself how many people it thinks it can live without. I'm not sure that's a recipe for success. The iron laws of bureaucracy don't go away just because Donald Trump is looking over your shoulder.
By the way, OMB is probably exempt from all this because it's part of the Executive Office of the President. Lucky Russell Vought! But the Office of Personnel Management isn't, and it boasts about 2,500 employees. I wonder how many will get the ax? Gotta set a good example for everyone else, after all.
Who knows with these people, but I suspect the key is the bit about focusing on "non-essential" workers.
They're going to come back and propose eliminating everyone but "essential" workers and whatever pets they want to keep around - a permanent government shutdown.
I think that'll be too much for even some Freedom Caucus types, but my bet is that'll be the opening bid.
Yep.
We're so fucked.
The "iron laws" of bureaucracy aren't so much solid iron as they are rusted and pitted, easily demolished with a sledgehammer.
As Josh Marshall points out “probationary workers” can be either new hires or promotions/lateral transfers. So a person who has, say, 16 years on the job but who has been recently promoted might face being fired outright. That’s not how things are supposed to work but apparently it’s happening.
A gentle decline starting in the early 1990's (possibly internet related) and a sharp rise around 2009 (financial crisis?). I wonder what trend 2025 will bring.
There are sharp rises for the census effort every 10 years. Nothing to do with the financial crisis.
Census spikes are not showing up, though they might be smoothed out.
They don't now how government works or what they're doing...or they just don't care. If the goal is to destroy governance, then this is the best way to do it.
MAGA people, of course, presumably including Trump and Musk, are convinced the size of the federal pubic service has been growing out of control for generations. If I thought they read books, I'd blame Parkinson's Law.
The "drown government in a bathtub" folks are finally getting their wish, and they want as much money as possible for tax cuts for the wealthy. They are going to want enormous cuts.
...and 10 years from now, people will look around and ask, "Why is everything shittier than when I was growing up?"
And then they'll load up their truck, like Okies on the Mother Road, and wait their turn to go to Mars. "A new life awaits you on the off-world colonies."
Won't even have to wait 10 years. I bet it takes just 2-3.
Life on Mars will *always* be shittier than anything experienced growing up on Earth.
Mars has half the sunlight and two orders of magnitude less air than Earth, and it's only infrequently above freezing (and generally much, much colder than that).
Anybody (looking at you, Elongated Muskrat) clamoring to live on Mars really ought to explain why they aren't clamoring to live in Antarctica, which is about a zillion times more habitable.
No coincidence that this memo went out the day after the House budget resolution squeaked by. No wonder trump was working the foot-draggers so hard. The evil trolls had this all written up in November, just waiting to attach a date to it.
You know how USAID distribution has been handled by small charitable groups, many affiliated with main-line churches? Reneging on old contracts and stopping new ones will destroy most of them, even if the administration ends up losing in court. The VA also has had bunches of contracts with small local disability groups and other vet-help operations, many staffed by vets. Those groups are being destroyed too.
Somebody in this administration-- a lot of somebodies in this administration-- hates this country as it has been throughout my lifetime with such a burning ferocity that I can't begin to comprehend it.
Did the Northeast blue state Republicans get SALT deductions reinstated? I haven't seen anything on that yet I was told that it was a huge sticking point for Republicans in blue states.
Can't be sure. A Goodwinlaw summary says the caps will still be there, but a Wharton summary seems to say the opposite. Some of the confusion could be because the cap is part of the expiring law that the new resolution extends in its effects but not explicitly by name. IOW the cap doesn't have to be lifted, can just be left to expire. Plus trump and others have talked about lifting it, but not in this context.
Based on coverage, it seems like Medicaid reductions were the biggest worry for those blue-state Rs, much more than this cap. Which seems like a reasonable ranking. If I was a betting man I'd say these guys were promised on the qt that Medicaid would be fine in the end and the cap would be gone, this is just for show, and between that and the thumbscrews they all went along. But I'd also bet they're planning alternate careers, unless they actually believed such obvious lies.
10% of the workforce size at the end of December 2024.
In the 10-70-20 rule, 10% of a workforce is considered underperforming / deadweight. In the tech sector, specifically, they use "stack ranking" to identify the bottom 10% to be eliminated.
That's what Musk appears to have used at Birdsite. But instead of getting rid of just the bottom 10%, he got rid of the lower 80%. As he keeps highlighting in his notes to employees, he's searching for just the best and most dedicated workers -- the top 20%.
This is the hidden reason why the US 'doesn't have enough qualified tech workers' and need so many H-1B visas. In practice, Musk and many tech folks are applying social Darwinism. It's not a coincidence that a class of people in America are celebrating what they see as a new Gilded Age while holding Nazi-like beliefs. (And if you try to tell them that stack ranking is social Darwinism, they'll take great offense that they're mini Hitlers. But that's what they are.)
If he had his way, he'd target 80% of the federal workforce. But he can't. Therefore, he's going to target exactly 10%.
The bigger the better. Democrats want to mitigate the damage done by trump, but that just makes him tolerable. Might as well re-elect the republicans if you take the edge off. That's not the way to beat him. Casualties of war.
Yes, yes, more of Justin's sound advice. The only way to beat the other side is to give up and let them win even harder.
1) Don't know the specifics of your data, Kevin, but does that include federal contract workers? The proportion of contract workers has risen a LOT over this period. The entire issues of Federal contract workers has not really come up in this all; are they going to be cut as well? Increased to do the jobs of the fired Feds? As a federal contractor myself, this concerns me.
2) I also saw that major categories, most prominently national security and law enforcement, will be exempted. I guess they are planning to utterly savage the folks in the other departments or something, if they want to get Big Numbers Ideally, the cuts would be modest but enough for Trump to crow about a great victory and then move along to whatever next shiny bright object comes into his field of vision...
The graph does not include contractors so is meaningless in this discussion. There are 2.2 million regular federal workers and 3.9 million contract employees.
I'm not sure, but I would guess that the falling number of civilian gov't employees is mostly due to the fact that the government actually contracts out much of it's work these days. Fewer people directly on the federal payroll, but lots more out there with federal contracts. And, unsurprisingly, that's also where there actually is a lot of wastefraudandabuse. But I doubt DOGE is going to be looking too closely at that, especially when it comes to satellite communications and space launch services.
Project 2025--the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a 2nd Trump term-- calls for firing 50,000 + federal employees for Trump loyal replacements
I agree that the chart should include contract employees to be valid, but how do you measure that number? Certainly, workers who show up at Federal work sites with a different color ID badge (contract workers) should be included. I would also think that if entire functionality that had traditionally been provided by Federal workers, but has been outsourced to contract employees should also be included. I would think that these workers would be harder to keep track of historically over the last 30+ years for KD's chart. (I believe that Snowden was an NSA subcontractor working for Dell).
I think I need to have my 101 year old mom call SSI soon to provide her change of address before the big RIF. It may be satisfying to me if she waits and gets a busy signal, after she voted for Trump for the 3rd time, but I would then have to figure out how to contact SSI for her.
Accurate numbers are hard to find, but assuming this article is correct, then:
1. DOGE etc has cut between 30,000 - 100,000 Federal employees
2. Biden added 140,000 Federal employees over his four years
3. Clinton cut 440,000 Federal employees during his National Performance
Review initiate.
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/25/musk-is-shredding-government-not-even-close/
It's not correct.
Please see graph in Kevin's post.