Federal Government Policy and Business

Trump's push to cut federal jobs has modest impact, mostly in defense

Reuters: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s campaign to shrink the “bloated federal bureaucracy” so far has made a small dent in the federal workforce, and that largely because of a decline in civilian defense jobs.

Days after his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump ordered a hiring freeze later replaced with an order for federal agencies to cut staff immediately, and in March he proposed a 2018 budget that sought to shift $54 billion to the military from other departments.

However, federal civilian jobs declined around 6,000 in the first nine months of this year, or just 0.3 percent of 2.1 million such jobs tracked by the Office of Personnel Management, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest OPM data published in late October.

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