There will be some 300,000 fewer federal workers on the government payroll by the end of December than there were in January, according to the Trump administration’s top human resources official.
That amounts to the loss of about one in eight federal civilian workers, and would be the largest single-year reduction since World War II. But in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, Scott Kupor, painted the coming few months as a period of relative stability after a time of tremendous upheaval.
He said the resignation incentives first introduced by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, accounted for the bulk of the 300,000 departures. He said most would be officially separated by the end of September, and others by the end of the year. Most have already stopped working, even though they remain on the payroll.
In addition, though some already announced cuts are still pending, he said he did not expect significant new layoffs — formally called reductions in force — before Sept. 30, the end of the government’s fiscal year.
“That’s roughly like 2.4 million to start and ending roughly about 2.1 million,” Mr. Kupor said of the size of the civilian work force when Mr. Trump returned to office and what it will be at the end of the year.
The figure is the clearest picture yet from the federal government of the extent of President Trump’s downsizing. Mr. Trump has said the effort is about eliminating waste, saving money and making the government run more efficiently. But it also represents a reduction of a bureaucracy that he believes has tried to thwart him. Many federal employees say the depth of the cuts has threatened to cripple vital services, drained the government of expertise and wreaked havoc on workers and their families.
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