Throw out the exceptionData shows Trump’s cutbacks in authorities
11.01.2026, 11:40 Clock
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After taking office, Donald Trump announced massive cuts to federal authorities. A year later, data shows a massive restructuring. However, most employees leave more or less voluntarily.
Between January and November 2025, approximately 335,000 U.S. federal employees left government service. According to a report in the Washington Post, this emerges from data that the federal government’s human resources department published on Thursday.
Contrary to what US President Donald Trump and his interim efficiency representative Elon Musk announced, most of them were not fired. Rather, the vast majority resigned against payment of severance pay or took advantage of various early retirement offers. Only 11,000 employees were laid off.
According to the newspaper, the latest data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) highlights the extent of the largest restructuring of the federal workforce since the 1990s. The data set breaks down staff numbers by agency and other demographic characteristics.
Also significant new hires
Accordingly, the workforce of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was almost completely reduced. The Department of Education, which Trump had promised to abolish, lost around 40 percent of its employees. Almost 700 of them were released. At the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 4,000 employees were laid off, but the number of voluntary layoffs was more than three times as high.
According to the breakdown, more than a third of the Agriculture Department’s food inspectors left the civil service. More than a quarter of Social Security’s IT department was eliminated. The Ministry of Finance was missing around 4,000 tax auditors at the beginning of 2026, which corresponds to around 26 percent.
In total, only eight subordinate authorities recorded an increase in staff. They include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There was a recruitment campaign there to get officials involved in the planned deportations of immigrants. According to the data overview, more than 6,000 new employees were hired within eleven months. The agency announced at the beginning of January that it had hired around 12,000 ICE officers and agents. There were also new hires at the Secret Service and the Federal Police training centers.
