April 13, 2026, 4:31 a.m. ET
The second Trump administration has had few bright spots, but one stands out: its effort to tame the federal bureaucracy.
In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the federal workforce shrank by 10%. That follows a sharp rise under the Biden administration – and even during Trump’s first term, the number of federal employees grew across four years.
A chaotic rollout masked what is, for the most part, good policy. The federal government continues to run much as it always has, and most Americans haven’t noticed a difference.
Trump 2.0 shrank the bureaucracy without breaking it
The federal workforce is smaller than at any point since the 1960s, the result of a deliberate effort by the Trump administration.
Critics have asked how many employees the federal government can lose before it breaks. So far, the answer appears to be more than a 10% reduction.
Most of the cuts were in white-collar roles: administrative, accounting and human resources.
Most notably, the administration slashed the workforce at agencies it argues should not exist at all. The Department of Education, for example, has seen 43% its staff cut as the administration moves toward shutting it down.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten warned the cuts would throw federal education programs “into chaos across the country.”
So far, there’s been little evidence of that. Even during last fall’s government shutdown, which effectively froze the Education Department, schools saw little disruption.
The federal government is not a jobs program. Being hired as a federal employee does not mean you are entitled to that job forever, whether due to performance or obsolescence.
Those laid off will likely find productive work elsewhere – in state or local government or the private sector.
A chaotic rollout – but the cuts worked
To an extent, critics had a point: The rollout of these layoffs was less than ideal. The initial flurry of firings was chaotic, and there is little reassuring about cuts being recommended by one of Elon Musk’s teenage employees.
But more than 150,000 workers, under half of the 348,219 who left the federal government in 2025, took voluntary buyouts, rather than being haphazardly axed as critics suggest.
There were also serious messaging problems. Polling last spring showed Americans were overwhelmingly dissatisfied with how the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) handled the layoffs. Some of that reflects media coverage, but much of it was self-inflicted – an administration that too often drifted into cruelty in how it talked about people losing their jobs.
But as the debate has faded from the front pages, the results have been clearer than the fears. The cuts happened, and the system didn’t break.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
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