About 75,000 federal workers took the government’s deferred-resignation offer by mid-February 2025. That was one lever. There were several, and they were pulled in sequence.
The federal civilian workforce stood at roughly 2.4 million people before the second Trump administration began, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By March 2026, about 9 percent of it had been eliminated. The New York Times, counting buyouts and planned reductions as well as confirmed firings, put the total at 12 percent as of May 2025. CNN’s tracker, which counts only layoffs and targeted layoffs, had logged at least 51,224 by mid-July. The Partnership for Public Service said on August 26, 2025 that just under 200,000 federal workers had already left.
The numbers differ because the cuts did not come in one package.
How the cuts were made
On January 28, 2025, Trump signed an executive order stripping protections from thousands of federal employees. The same day the administration offered the resignation deal. On February 13, Charles Ezell, then acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, told agencies to dismiss probationary employees, generally those with less than a year in their jobs, and to tell them their performance was inadequate. Some of those fired had received top ratings or had never been reviewed.
That same day, OMB Director Russ Vought and Ezell ordered agencies to submit plans by March 13 for layoffs. They pointed agencies toward jobs not required by statute, the roughly one-third of the workforce, about 700,000 people, who face furloughs in a shutdown. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the vehicle for much of this, took control of federal information systems to carry out the downsizing.
Some firings were reversed within days. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, reinstated 950 Indian Health Service employees hours after they were laid off on February 14. Agriculture Department staff working on H5N1 bird flu and employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration were also brought back, and the Food and Drug Administration rehired some staff who reviewed medical devices and food safety.
The courts
In May, a federal judge paused the layoff actions at major agencies with a preliminary injunction. It did not last. On July 8, 2025, the Supreme Court overrode the lower-court orders and let the reductions proceed. Politico called the cuts the largest attempt to reorganize the federal government since the civil service was professionalized, and said the ruling reversed the old assumption that federal workers had solid job protections.
Judges kept ruling against the administration on the merits and kept declining to reinstate anyone. During the 2025 shutdown, the White House announced another 4,100 layoffs. Judge Susan Illston blocked them temporarily, citing public statements by Vought and Trump that she said showed political motives, including Trump’s remark that the cuts would target “Democrat agencies.”
What a 10 percent cut can mean
Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, raised the problem early. The administration had said it wanted a 10 percent reduction. “What happens if that is 50% of the food safety inspectors or 50% of the air traffic controllers or 50% at the FBI?” he asked. Departures, he said, are “entirely unpredictable.”
The 1990s offer a precedent. A 1997 report by the agency now called the Government Accountability Office found that buyouts handed out across the board had cost 15 agencies corporate memory and expertise, and left 11 with work backlogs. Don Moynihan, a University of Michigan professor, said agencies ended up rehiring some of the same people as consultants, at higher cost.
The White House says the cuts saved money and shrank the government’s role. Federal salaries, Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute noted, are only 5 to 6 percent of total spending.
Sources
- 2025 United States federal mass layoffs – Wikipedia
- Trump wants to cut the federal workforce. Who they are and what that means
