DOGE firings crop up in jobs data but total scope still lags

The Trump administration's efforts to slash the federal workforce is beginning to show up in employment data, with the brunt of those cuts still to come.

So far this year, civilian non-postal federal employment has fallen by 12,400, or 0.5%. That's the biggest quarterly decline since the 2020 coronavirus pandemic as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency announced plans to cut tens of thousands of federal jobs.

The three-month reduction in the federal workforce is the biggest for a new administration since such jobs fell by 0.9% after former President Bill Clinton took office in 1993.

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There have been more than 280,000 planned firings of federal workers and contractors across 27 agencies during the past two months, as well as more than 4,400 job-cut announcements at employers who rely on federal aid or contracts, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

But those are announced firings, and many federal workers who have been told their positions have been eliminated are still counted as employed because they've been put on administrative leave while their terminations face legal disputes.

About 75,000 federal workers also took an offer in January to voluntarily leave their jobs and still receive pay and benefits through Sept. 30, technically keeping them employed through the end of the government's fiscal year. A second buyout offer was announced earlier this week at some agencies.

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Including postal workers, Friday's jobs report showed a one-month decline of about 4,000 federal employees through the middle of March, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics' payrolls survey was conducted. The BLS also noted in its report that employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed.

Federal workers file applications for jobless benefits in the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees program. Those claims spiked for two weeks in February but have since come down to levels close to their 18-month average.

Economists anticipate the number of job cuts and unemployment claims to spike in the data in the coming months as workers exhaust severance pay, administrative leave periods lapse and courts settle ongoing disputes over terminations.