Washington Wednesday: Reducing the federal workforce

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 5th of March.

Thank you for listening to WORLD Radio. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Today, the trimming of the federal workforce.

The Department of Government Efficiency asked employees again last week to give an account of their work. That comes as it continues its audit aimed at cutting unnecessary programs.

BROWN: What do federal layoffs mean for the government, and the country?

WORLD’s Washington Bureau Reporter Leo Briceno has the story.

LEO BRICENO: Andrea Kohler used to study fruit tree genetics for the United States Department of Agriculture…with a grant program researching, among other things, how to increase crop yields.

Then, a few weeks ago, Kohler started getting unusual emails from the office of personnel management.

KOHLER: They actually created a new email address that we were getting all these from and initially people thought it was spam. So, we had this whole thing where the department quick-sent everybody emails like ‘no this isn’t actually spam.’

Kohler says that those emails were initially just reminding her of her status as a probationary employee of the government—a regular designation for federal employees of two years or less.

KOHLER: I got an email saying, ‘hey you’ve been put on a list of probationary employees.’ I was like ‘that’s cool, whatever.’

But the emails kept coming, and made Kohler wonder if she should be concerned. Then she got the email saying she’d been fired.

Kohler now joins the roughly 26,000 federal employees terminated in recent weeks as the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE —looks to trim down government spending. Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman leading the effort, spoke at CPAC 2025 last month, touting the waste he’s cleared so far.

MUSK: Waste is pretty much everywhere. People ask, ‘how can you find waste in D.C.?’ I’m like look it’s like being in a room and the walls, the roof, and the floor are all targets. So, it’s like you can close your eyes and shoot in any direction—you can’t miss.

The layoffs have added thousands of job seekers to the market, raising questions about how those cuts will affect the U.S. economy and the effectiveness of the government.

The federal government is the country’s single largest employer. According to data from the Pew Research Center, the government employs more than 3 million people, not including active-duty military personnel. For perspective, about 2 in 100 American workers are on the federal payroll.

That’s more than all the U.S. employees from Walmart and Amazon—combined.

JONES:It remains to be seen what the effect is going to be.

Michael Jones is a professor at the University of Cincinnati. He studies the economics of labor and the workforce. Jones says the entire government workforce has not disappeared overnight—only a small part of it.

Whether the economy feels that incremental change depends on how fast these employees can get back in the workforce.

JONES: The administration itself would argue that if these individuals are productive then the private sector will pick them up and they will be able to be gainfully employed in the private sector, generating taxes and economic growth. Many might retire and just not re-enter the workforce.

Last year, 88,000 federal employees retired voluntarily. Fifteen percent of the Federal workforce was over the age of 60 in 2023.

Most immediately, the types of cuts may make certain industries more competitive.

JONES: These aren’t blue-collar workers that are being let go, a lot of them are white collar workers. Generally, you see a lot of crossover between non-profits, and federal government, consulting types of work, and so…I’m pretty certain that those individuals will try to find jobs in that sector. And so that will certainly increase the competition for either new or experienced grads who are looking to work in the nonprofit sector.

There also might be competition from the hiring side of things. State governments in particular seem eager to snap up federal employees. Governor Josh Green of Hawaii signed an executive order last week to fast-track new hires in engineering, planning, accounting, and other areas.

But many federal employees are waiting to see if they can get their jobs back. Last week, a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the administration from carrying out some firings. In his ruling, District Judge William Alsup paused firings from several agencies, including the National Parks Service and Department of Defense.

Meanwhile, the cuts are beginning to be felt at the local level…particularly in Washington.

JONES: A lot more homes are being listed. You’re starting to see even effects on home sale prices within the Washington, D.C. metro area. So, to the extent that local economies are heavily dependent on the federal workforce, you will see that play out on the local economy.

Nationally, 93% of the federal workforce is outside the beltway.

Andrea Kohler, the former USDA employee, lives in West Virginia. And she says that while cuts have affected new hires…longtime employees who were recently promoted have also gotten pink slips. That includes at least one senior member who worked alongside her at the USDA.

KOHLER: And what happened was that she was promoted from one position to another. And within the government, when you change positions like that, you re-enter a probationary period. Ironically, this is disproportionately affecting the best performers because they are more likely to have moved up a position in the last year.

Another wrinkle is that the workforce cuts came ahead of trimming the program itself. Tens of thousands of dollars in team positions were cut…but millions of dollars in grant funds are still on the books.

KOHLER: Because it was a project that was a grant that was awarded to a university and the money has already been transferred, it’s already there.

That grant money funded her team’s work. But now there’s no team to do it. For now, Kohler is waiting to see if her job is restored.

DOGE leader Elon Musk is skeptical about how productive many federal programs really are. Here he is in a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.

MUSK: As bad as Twitter was, the federal government is much worse.

After purchasing Twitter and renaming it X, Musk cut the company’s workforce by 80%. In a similar way now, Musk says he’s taking aggressive action to cut waste, but acknowledges it will not be flawless execution.

MUSK: If we make a mistake we will quickly fix it. So, we need to act fast to stop wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money. But if we make a mistake we will reverse it quickly.

That’s it for Washington Wednesday.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

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