The federal workforce has contracted to approximately 2.7 million employees under the Trump administration, marking the lowest level in six decades, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Since President Trump’s return to office in January 2025, more than 300,000 federal positions have been eliminated, representing an 11% reduction in the overall civil service.

The bulk of these cuts took place during the first year of Trump’s second term, with staffing figures stabilizing throughout 2026. Notably, the BLS figures exclude active military personnel, numbering around 1.35 million, as well as roughly 100,000 intelligence agency employees.

Federal workforce size typically fluctuates in census years, rising sharply to 3.4 million in 2010 and nearly 3.2 million in 2020 to support data collection efforts. Before the recent downsizing, employment in non-census years peaked at just over 3 million in January 2025, coinciding with the start of Trump’s new term.

Sharpening his focus on reducing government size, President Trump entrusted Elon Musk, owner of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with broad authority to implement payroll cuts and seek operational savings. This restructuring effort resulted in job reductions across nearly all major federal agencies, including the Departments of Education, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development. The Department of Homeland Security remained an outlier, with headcount largely unchanged amid the administration’s intensified immigration restrictions.

A significant wave of departures occurred in late September 2025, when more than 150,000 federal workers accepted buyouts offered as part of the administration’s workforce reduction strategy. This event represented the largest annual attrition in federal civil service in nearly eight decades.

Despite the dramatic decline in personnel, federal salary expenditures did not correspondingly decrease. Treasury Department data shows that the government’s spending on federal pay in Trump’s first year rose to approximately $244 billion, a 3% increase compared with the same period during the Biden administration. The reasons behind this spending rise amid a shrinking workforce have not been fully detailed, leaving questions about the impact of the downsizing on government efficiency and fiscal savings.