One of the most unheralded policy successes of President Donald Trump’s second term has been the purging of many unnecessary federal jobs.
The federal government has reduced its workforce by 300,000 jobs since Jan. 20, 2025, bringing it down to a still-bulky 2.7 million employees.
Not since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society vastly expanded the scope of the national government has the federal workforce been at this level.
It’s not merely that the feds have shed superfluous jobs — there are still over 4 million contract workers, after all.
It’s that the White House has been targeting all the right institutions.
The bloated War Department, with over 61,000 departures, and the equally bloated State Department, with 37% of its staff gone, experienced the biggest reductions.
But most of the buyouts were aimed at agencies and departments that should have been shuttered a long time ago.
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