The Trump administration has fired about 25,000 federal workers to date. Media and politicians are telling the American people that this is a massive “slash and burn” cut to the federal government.
The truth is quite different. The number 25,000 represents only a tiny slice from the federal work force. Specifically, it’s about 8/10 of one percent of the 3,000,000 civilian federal employees.
It’s also far less than federal civilian employment has grown in recent years. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 548,200 more non-postal civilian federal workers in 2024 than in 2000. So far, the Trump cuts amount to less than five percent of the Bush-Obama-Biden increases.
Democrats, Republicans, and the mass media all have incentives to exaggerate the scope of the Trump administration’s firings, just as they had incentives to exaggerate the alleged regulatory reductions during the first Trump administration. In both cases, the changes have been marginal. The Trump regulatory reductions were really reductions in the rate of regulatory increase. And they were easily reversable—and were reversed—by the Biden administration.
Employment reductions also are easily reversable.
The only way to make real and somewhat permanent reductions in the size of the federal government is for Congress to repeal laws that authorize agencies, particularly agencies—such as the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development—that have no bona fide constitutional basis. Moreover, Congress must terminate those agencies’ functions rather than to re-assign them to other departments, and the President must terminate their employees.
It is still early in the second Trump administration. Whether Congress or the administration have the stomach for real cuts remains to be seen.
This article was originally published at the Independence Institute, and is reposted here with permission of the author.
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