President Donald Trump has presided over a massive contraction of the federal workforce since returning to the White House, with new data showing more than one out of every ten federal payroll jobs has disappeared since January 2025. Federal employment fell by another 5,000 jobs in August, bringing the total down to 2.674 million. That is 336,000 fewer federal payroll jobs than the 3.010 million recorded in January 2025, a decline of roughly 11.2%.
The drop comes after Trump entered office promising to shrink Washington’s bureaucracy, reduce federal spending, and move more economic activity back into the private sector. Much of the administration’s first year was dominated by agency downsizing, hiring restrictions, buyouts, and other efforts aimed at reducing headcount across the government. The newest employment numbers show those changes have produced a sustained reduction in the federal payroll rather than a short-lived hiring pause.
The pace of the cuts has slowed sharply in 2026, however. Federal employment is down by only about 11,000 jobs since January of this year, meaning the overwhelming majority of the reduction happened during Trump’s first year back in office. Even with the slower pace, August still brought another 5,000-job decline in federal employment.
As Breitbart reported, federal payrolls are now down by 242,000 workers over the past year alone. Excluding the U.S. Postal Service, the decline was even larger at approximately 251,000 because Postal Service employment actually increased by roughly 9,000 over the same period. That divergence means the broader federal bureaucracy contracted even more than the federal employment figure initially suggests.
The latest Labor Department report also showed that the cuts in Washington are occurring while the private economy continues to add jobs. Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in August, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1%. Private-sector payrolls rose by 127,000 for the month, according to the figures cited by Breitbart.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described the administration’s broader economic goal as a “reprivatization” away from government-driven growth. During his confirmation hearing, Bessent said, “Wall Street has done great, it is time for Main Street to do well and small businesses need to drive what I call the reprivatization away from government spending.” The federal employment numbers provide one measure of how aggressively that shift has already taken place inside Washington.
The change is especially striking compared with the direction of federal employment under former President Joe Biden. Breitbart calculated that if federal employment had continued growing at the pace seen during the Biden years, the federal government would now employ roughly 3.06 million workers. That would put the federal workforce nearly 386,000 jobs above its current level.
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The federal cuts also stand apart from what is happening at the state and local level. Overall government employment increased by 35,000 in August because state and local hiring more than offset the federal decline. Local government added about 50,000 jobs, including nearly 42,000 in local public education, while state government employment fell by 10,000.
The result is a federal workforce that Breitbart said is now smaller than at any point since 2015. Federal payroll employment stood at 3.010 million in January 2025; by August 2026, that figure had fallen to 2.674 million. The 336,000-job reduction amounts to an 11.2% contraction in less than two years.
Watch Karoline Leavitt comment on corrupt federal bureaucrats here: