President Donald Trump has forced out nearly 10 percent of the federal workforce.
More than 199,000 federal workers were ousted from their jobs since January, according to a new analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has been tracking the cuts.
“We’re seeing the arson of our government,” Max Stier, president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, told HuffPost. “The numbers are stunning. We can count 200,000, and the administration said 300,000, by the end of the year. That’s one in eight.”
Roughly two-thirds of the ex-employees left via Trump’s buyout—also known as his “Fork in the Road” deal—which offered furlough-threatened workers the opportunity to receive benefits and paid leave through September if they agreed to immediately resign.
Veterans have been disproportionately hurt by the mass layoffs: roughly one in four civilian employees previously served in the U.S. armed forces.
The Defense Department lost the most workers—more than 55,000 federal civilian employees were given the chop, HuffPost reported. The Treasury Department also suffered major cuts, losing more than 30,000 employees, as did the Department of Agriculture, which lost more than 21,000 people.
Those impacts have already been felt across the country. So far this year, the Social Security Administration has shuttered regional and field offices, minimizing access and creating longer wait times. Thousands of cuts at the Internal Revenue Service have also had an impact on taxpayer services. The near-total planned elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—which was formed in the wake of the 2008 recession—has left Americans at the mercy of corporate interests with little legal recourse.
The exact number of employees the Trump administration has forced out remains an enigma. The Partnership for Public Service’s statistics are much higher than previously reported figures: Last month, CNN tracked just a quarter of that progress, assessing that roughly 51,000 federal employees had lost their jobs.
“Huge numbers of very talented public servants are being forced out the door. That’s going to hurt,” said Stier. “The services that Americans have come to expect are not going to be there.”
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