More than a third of the Agriculture Department’s food inspectors left government last year. Over a quarter of Social Security’s IT management is gone. The Treasury Department is down about 4,000 tax examiners, or about 26 percent.
In total, about 335,000 federal workers left government from January to November 2025, with a vast majority of those people quitting or retiring, according to data released Thursday by the federal government’s human resources arm. While Trump officials and billionaire Elon Musk had vowed to fire many federal employees — accusing the workforce of being bloated and inefficient — only a small fraction of workers, approximately 11,000, were actually laid off.
The Office of Personnel Management’s latest data, which breaks down workforce numbers by agency and other demographics, reveals the extent of the biggest overhaul to the federal workforce since the 1990s. For the first time, the data also shows in detail the extent to which the administration slashed agencies that didn’t conform to President Donald Trump’s policy priorities.
The agency touted the release of the data as part of an online dashboard, which it said will be updated monthly.
“The Federal Workforce Data website delivers timely, transparent data in a format that is easy to use and built for the future,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement. “This is a major step forward for accountability and data-driven decision-making across government.”
The data reflects the past year’s headlines. For instance, nearly all of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s workforce was wiped out, largely through layoffs, after the administration moved to formally abolish the agency. The Education Department, which Trump has promised to eliminate, lost about 40 percent of its staff, including nearly 700 employees who were laid off. Over 4,000 people were laid off at the Department of Health and Human Services, while the number of voluntary departures was over three times that number.
A far greater number of federal employees took buyout offers that Musk and agencies offered last year to reduce workforces, The Washington Post previously reported. While the database doesn’t specifically say how many workers took buyouts, those employees were counted among those who quit, which totaled about 154,000, or about half of those who left. Over 100,000 others took various forms of retirement offers, leading to a backlog in processing the departures.
Those retirements and buyouts touched nearly every kind of job within government, including nurses at Veterans Affairs hospitals, park rangers and Internal Revenue Service agents.
Many federal workers described feeling beaten down and exhausted by the Trump administration, encouraging people across the board to leave, said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that advocates to improve federal agencies and services. Stier said the database reflects the aftermath of an assault that left no agency untouched.
“This is very much a snapshot of our government post-hurricane,” Stier said. “If you come back to a community after a hurricane has come through, the damage is large and idiosyncratic.”
At the same time, the administration launched a hiring campaign to recruit Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for its efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, gaining more than 6,000 ICE employees in 11 months. In total, the agency said on Jan. 3 that it has hired about 12,000 ICE officers and agents. There were also more hires within the Secret Service and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers.
In total, just eight subagencies saw an increase in staffing while the rest of the government was cut. Some of those subagencies, such as the Interior Secretary’s office, increased only because offices were consolidated.
Anu Narayanswamy and Emily Davies contributed to this report.
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