Elon Musk has promised to take a chain saw to the federal government with his Department of Government Efficiency. It has been difficult, though, to figure out exactly how many jobs have been, or will be, cut.
For a department that loves to post its receipts (inaccurate as they can be), there is no single, public count.
There are a few numbers we do know. The federal government has about three million employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 75,000 federal workers took Musk up on his offer of deferred buyouts — a figure that represents only about half the number of workers who typically quit or retire in a given year.
At least 25,000 workers have been laid off, according to a New York Times tally, bringing the total of confirmed layoffs and buyouts to roughly 100,000. But that figure is most likely an undercount; it doesn’t account for every agency. It also doesn’t reflect the thousands of probationary workers who were fired and then temporarily reinstated by judges.
And there are more cuts coming. Federal agencies faced a deadline late last week to submit their plans for broad reductions in force, but not all of them released those details to the public. My colleague Eileen Sullivan has a helpful roundup of those plans.
Even as the total numbers remain unclear, the impact of individual cuts is coming into focus. A few recent Times stories illustrate worries that even small reductions may have significant, and in some cases unintended, consequences:
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This morning, my colleagues Sharon LaFraniere, Minho Kim and Julie Tate reported that the National Nuclear Security Administration has lost a cadre of scientists, engineers and safety experts. The cuts come as the agency is undertaking a major effort to upgrade the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Many of the workers who took the buyout offer have a top-secret security clearance that gives them access to information about how the country’s nuclear weapons are designed, produced and used.
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Current and former employees of the Social Security Administration told my colleague Tara Siegel Bernard that the proposed job cuts there could blow holes in the agency’s infrastructure and endanger access to benefits for some of the 73 million people who rely on the program. One union official told Tara that it’s not clear who will be around to fix problems if they arise. “They are firing first and aiming later,” she said. The agency says it is “identifying efficiencies and reducing costs, with a renewed focus on mission-critical work.”
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And last week, my colleagues Roni Caryn Rabin and Nicholas Nehamas reported on how the Department of Veterans Affairs’ inability to renew the job of a single research coordinator running a clinical trial for patients with advanced cancers put the entire trial on hold. (The agency moved to fix the problem facing research staffers after my colleagues asked about it.)
MEANWHILE on X
Musk talks to Cruz
Elon Musk is using his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger guides you through his most important messages in recent days.
Elon Musk shared several clips on Monday from his recent interview with Senator Ted Cruz on the senator’s podcast, “Verdict.” Musk wore an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt during his sit-down with Cruz — a reference to his plans to colonize the planet — but he largely used the interview to talk about his government cost-cutting project.
Musk estimated that the cuts identified by DOGE were “80 percent waste, 20 percent fraud.” He said the team was focusing on technology costs, claiming some federal agencies had more licenses for software than employees.
“An agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses?” Cruz asked.
“Yes,” Musk responded.
Musk made similar complaints about Twitter. After he bought the company, now rebranded as X, Musk tried to eliminate as much spending with outside vendors as possible. He deputized executives to renegotiate contracts with major cloud service providers, eliminated spending on software licenses and stopped paying some vendors altogether, leading to lawsuits. It’s a quick-and-dirty tactic to get spending down but may not lead to widespread reform of the kind Musk has championed.
Musk shared these video clips as X has pushed to bring long-form video content, like Cruz’s podcast, onto the platform. He has repeatedly tried to persuade influencers and broadcasters to abandon competitors like YouTube for X, a platform known for quick, text-based updates.
Can Trump make conservatives love Teslas?
President Trump’s White House car show was an attempt to support Elon Musk by persuading more conservatives to buy Teslas. But auto experts say his sales pitch might not be enough to fill the vacuum.
Analysts at JPMorgan predict that Tesla will deliver fewer cars in the first quarter than it has in three years.
“When you make your product unattractive to half the market, I promise you, you won’t increase your sales,” said Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision, an automotive research and consulting firm.
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The post Making Sense of DOGE’s Cuts appeared first on New York Times.
