The federal government experienced the largest downturn in jobs last month since the summer of 2022, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.
An estimated 10,000 jobs in the federal workforce were lost in February, marking the largest amount of federal government jobs lost since June 2022, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data. The report comes amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to uproot government waste and reduce unnecessary spending across the federal government, which has resulted in massive layoffs across several government agencies.
“The recent decline in federal employment aligns with the Trump Administration’s objectives to both reduce government expenditure and enhance efficiency,” Peter Earle, a senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been the tip of the spear in that regard implementing significant workforce reductions across various federal agencies. To date, approximately 62,530 job cuts have been reported across 17 federal agencies, reflecting efforts to streamline operations and eliminate redundancies. There are a handful of other factors in the recent slump in employment, including uncommonly bad weather in January and February, but most of the decline we’re seeing at the Federal level is DOGE at work.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised Trump’s economy in a Friday post on X, writing that America’s economy is “soaring back to greatness.”
“In one month under President Trump, the American economy is soaring back to greatness after the economic calamity left by Joe Biden,” Leavitt wrote in the social media post. “The manufacturing industry is already rebounding as there were 9,000 new auto jobs created — the most auto jobs added in 15 months! Under President Trump, the private sector is leading the way — 93% of the job gains in February were in the private sector. This is great news for American workers and families. The Trump Administration will continue to work hard to implement pro-growth policies and push Congress to enact the Trump Economic Agenda.”
Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by Elon Musk, shortly after returning to office. The agency was created to cut spending across federal government agencies. While some Americans largely approve of DOGE’s attempts to cut out federal government waste, many Democrats have been attempting to push back against the department’s efforts.
The federal government had the highest number of planned job cuts in February, with 62,242 announced job cuts across 17 different agencies, according to a Thursday report from U.S.-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
Former President Joe Biden presided over a massive surge in federal government employment during his sole term. Notably, employing government workers is often much more expensive than employing private sector workers.
“Under President Biden’s tenure, federal government employment experienced modest growth, mostly responding to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Earle told the DCNF. “Despite that moderate growth in the headcount, spending by federal agencies surged beyond inflation rates (mostly due to emergency programs and ramped up subsidies). A good example of what occurred throughout the government under Biden is what happened at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That entity actually saw a 13 percent decrease in employees but a 469 percent increase in spending. Musk & DOGE would not have had a hard time finding official bloat ten or twenty years ago, but today it’s a target rich environment.”
Moreover, a large amount of the job growth seen under the Biden-Harris administration went toward foreign-born workers.
“President Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to cut federal government waste are already bearing fruit, with 10,000 wasteful federal government positions eliminated last month,” Job Creators Network CEO Alfredo Ortiz wrote in a Friday press release. “Quasi-government jobs in social assistance that provide little-to-no economic benefit grew at about half the rate as under the Biden administration. Stripping out these unproductive government and quasi-government jobs, the private-sector economy, led by small businesses, showed another solid month of hiring, with real wages significantly increasing.”
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