It may not be the dramatic swamp-draining scene some conservatives envisioned, but the all-you-can-eat federal payroll buffet appears to have gotten a little smaller.
According to a new report from Open the Books [1], the federal civilian workforce shrank by more than 50,000 employees between 2024 and 2025, excluding the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of War. The reduction translated into about $1.9 billion less in salary costs, marking one of the largest recent declines in the size of the federal bureaucracy. The reductions were a result of voluntary and involuntary separations with the government.
The report doesn’t suggest the federal government has suddenly become tiny. Millions of civilian employees remain on the payroll – 1,452,891 to be exact. And some agencies got larger like the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation (good news).
The federal government is still one of the nation’s largest employers. But after decades of complaints about a growing administrative state, a workforce reduction of more than 50,000 people is still a step in the right direction. Ninety-four agencies actually lost employees including the Department of Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
Only one agency was nixed altogether – the World War I Centennial Commission.
There is a LOT of information that wasn’t released by the government or redacted – including the fact that no information on bonuses was forthcoming. Redactions by both parties seem to be the flavor of the day when it comes to trying to get information from them.
Whether this marks the beginning of a sustained effort to shrink the federal workforce or merely a one-year correction remains to be seen. But for taxpayers who have long wondered whether Washington ever trims anything besides ribbon-cutting ceremonies, the latest numbers suggest that there are a few corners of the swamp that got a little less crowded.