After a year of upheaval for federal employees, the Trump administration appears to be only getting started on its plans for overhauling the career civil service.
Further federal workforce changes are expected to continue into 2026 and beyond, according to the goals the administration recently laid out in its President’s Management Agenda.
Many of the priorities, as the Office of Management and Budget outlined, either already have — or soon will — significantly impact federal employees.
Here are three workforce changes from the Trump administration that federal employees should look for in the new year:
Future federal staffing plans
The sheer size of the federal workforce changed considerably over the past year, with executive branch agencies losing a cumulative total of more than 300,000 federal employees, according to numbers from the Office of Personnel Management.
With those staffing cuts in place, agencies are beginning to assemble future-looking plans to further reshape their workforces over the next few years.
As a months-long hiring freeze starts to thaw, the Trump administration has required all agencies to submit annual staffing plans for the coming year, subject to review and approval by OMB and OPM officials. The administration also directed agencies to form strategic hiring committees, composed mainly of political appointees, to oversee all recruitment efforts.
Agencies’ staffing plans must “consider efficiencies” of organizational restructuring and consolidation, removal of “unnecessary management layers,” the elimination of “unnecessary” jobs and contractor positions, managing the performance of underachieving employees — and much more, Trump administration officials explained in November guidance.
Until OMB and OPM approve the staffing plans, agencies will have to stick to a four-to-one ratio of removing to hiring employees, according to the guidance.
An OMB senior official speaking on background recently told Federal News Network that the administration will measure agencies’ progress toward fulfilling the first PMA priority by seeing how they adhere to Trump’s latest executive order on federal hiring. The goal over the next few years is to ensure that while hiring does take place, it’s in a way that maintains the smaller size of the current federal workforce.
“A key part of that will be making sure agencies are putting in place those hiring committees,” the official said. “They’re making very strategic decisions around who they’re hiring and what positions they’re hiring for, so we don’t just inflate the federal government again and overwhelm all the success we’ve had in reductions to date.”
In past administrations, there have been efforts to dramatically downsize the federal workforce — most recently during the Clinton administration in the 1990s. But a recent report from the Federation of American Scientists said those prior efforts had “decidedly mixed results,” and cautioned the Trump administration not to make the same mistakes.
“The cuts came before changes to agency to-do lists that never materialized,” FAS wrote. “It will be important for this administration to learn lessons from the past to avoid some of the long-term damage wrought by the Clinton years, for which agencies are still paying.”
Many experts have also raised concerns of the loss of federal workforce expertise, due to the reductions that have already taken effect. Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, warned that the loss of institutional knowledge will worsen over time.
“The forced exodus of over 212,000 civil servants has created dangerous gaps in food safety inspection, Social Security processing, veterans’ healthcare and disaster response,” Stier told Federal News Network. “This loss of expertise directly harms Americans’ access to critical services and will take decades to repair.”
Going forward, Robert Shea, a former OMB official in the George W. Bush administration, said doing more work with significantly fewer employees is both a challenge, and a possible opportunity.
“Agencies that rely on existing processes will fail. Agencies that rethink how work gets done may actually improve,” Shea told Federal News Network. “The upside of AI and automation only materializes if feds are given the authority, training and political cover to use these tools.”
“Accountability” of federal employees
A focus on “accountability” has been another common theme for the Trump administration’s federal workforce changes — it’s an area of emphasis in the PMA, and likely to strengthen and expand in 2026 and beyond.
Already, “accountability” has appeared as a priority in the administration’s efforts to remove protections for career federal employees in “policy-influencing” positions, make reforms to the Senior Executive Service, and create a new governmentwide recruitment plan.
Heading into 2026, OPM has also estimated that around 50,000 career federal employees will be reclassified as “Schedule Policy/Career,” a move that would make the impacted workers at-will and easier to fire.
The Trump administration touted Schedule Policy/Career as a way to drive “accountability” in the federal workforce, while offering agencies more flexibility. But critics of the policy, formerly known as “Schedule F,” have warned that it will politicize the non-partisan career civil service.
“Ultimately, this ‘trauma’ leads to the federal government’s loss of talent and institutional knowledge, which damages our national security and makes us more vulnerable to bad actors; reduces government accountability to its citizens; and generates even more loss of trust in government,” said Raymond Limon, a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board and career-long federal executive in human capital.
Going forward, the Trump administration’s efforts on expanding these plans are “on track to get more severe,” according to the Partnership’s Stier.
“The expansion of Schedule Policy/Career authority threatens career protections, creates a climate of fear that drives talented professionals to leave government and further diminishes the services received by the public,” Stier told Federal News Network.
All told, the administration’s overhauls will lead to a “collapse of long-standing assumptions about civil service protections,” according to Shea.
“Constraints on removing career employees that were once treated as untouchable have been challenged directly,” Shea said. “Regardless of how courts ultimately rule, the impact will be long lasting.”
In 2026, federal employees are also facing significant changes in the way agencies measure performance, another way that OPM has said it is looking to increase “accountability” of employees.
OPM is looking to change performance management standards for federal employees. OPM Director Scott Kupor argues that “performance culture” in government is broken, and far too many federal employees are rated as high performers at their agencies.
“We have rampant ratings inflation and a lack of accountability for poor performers that fails to meaningfully differentiate between excellence, successful achievement of one’s objectives and poor performance,” Kupor wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post.
In June, OPM outlined plans to end “inflation” in performance ratings, and more strictly delineate between different levels of performance for employees. The changes also call on agencies to swiftly remove poor performers — and not substitute a suspension, for instance, when a full removal is more appropriate.
Forthcoming final regulations are expected to cement the emphasis of “accountability” in the administration’s changes to employee performance evaluations.
The idea of “accountability” also appears in the President’s Management Agenda, as part of a goal of fostering a “merit-based federal workforce.”
“The president’s executive orders and the PMA, together, call for revolutionary change, and together with OPM, we’re delivering,” OMB Deputy Director for Management Eric Ueland said in a Dec. 9 CHCO Council meeting. “The president directed agencies to reform the workforce, to maximize efficiency and productivity … Federal agencies have created meaningful efficiencies, allowing them to laser focus on their statutory duties.”
“Merit-based” workforce reforms
Finally, the Trump administration is calling for a focus on “merit-based” hiring across the federal workforce. It’s a top priority of the administration’s President’s Management Agenda, but also something that has appeared across multiple efforts from OPM.
In May, OPM first issued the administration’s new “merit hiring plan,” setting goals for reducing the government’s time-to-hire, as well as focusing on skills-based recruitment and a streamlined process.
The hiring guidance also required all agencies to assess candidates on USAJobs on how they plan to support the administration’s priorities when applying for open positions.
But in 2026, the goals of the “merit hiring plan,” in combination with the Trump administration’s PMA priority, are expected to take further effect, as agencies move forward with their new annual staffing plans.
“Moving forward, hiring will be based on merit and focused on practical skill, competence and dedication to the Constitution,” OMB’s Ueland said.
Combined, the merit hiring plan, performance changes, and newly required annual staffing plans will significantly reshape the federal workforce going forward.
“For those of you who have been in the private sector, much of this will seem like motherhood and apple pie,” Kupor wrote in a Nov. 21 blog post. “We are now inviting the federal government to join the planning party.”
OPM’s new “Tech Force” recruitment initiative, as an example, will embed the “merit hiring” principles as agencies look to onboard private-sector technologists and early-career talent through the new program.
But some of the hiring changes are common across recent presidential administrations. Recruitment strategies such as skills-based hiring and the use of shared certificates appeared in the Trump administration’s hiring guidance, similar to prior efforts from the Biden administration.
The FAS report noted, “the perennial need to hire federal employees more quickly and efficiently … have appeared in every PMA to date.”
Let’s start with the good news: artificial intelligence may NOT be the buzzword for 2026.
What will be the most talked about federal IT and/or acquisition topic for this year remains up for debate. While AI will definitely be part of the conversation, at least some experts believe other topics will emerge over the next 12 months. These range from the Defense Department’s push for “speed to capability” to resilient innovation to workforce transformation.
Federal News Network asked a panel of former federal technology and procurement executives for their opinions what federal IT and acquisition storylines they are following over the next 12 months. If you’re interested in previous years’ predictions, here is what experts said about 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The panelists are:
Jonathan Alboum, federal chief technology officer for ServiceNow and former Agriculture Department CIO.
Melvin Brown, vice president and chief growth officer at CANI and a former deputy CIO at the Office of Personnel Management.
Matthew Cornelius, managing director of federal industry at Workday and former OMB and Senate staff member.
Kevin Cummins, a partner with the Franklin Square Group and former Senate staff member.
Michael Derrios, the new executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University and former State Department senior procurement executive.
Julie Dunne, a principal with Monument Advocacy and former commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.
Mike Hettinger, founding principal of Hettinger Strategy Group and former House staff member.
Nancy Sieger, a partner at Guidehouse’s Financial Services Sector and a former IRS CIO.
What are two IT or acquisition programs/initiatives that you are watching closely for signs of progress and why?
Brown: Whether AI acquisition governance becomes standard, templates, clauses, evaluation norms, 2026 is where agencies turn OMB AI memos into repeatable acquisition artifacts, through solicitation language, assurance evidence, testing/monitoring expectations and privacy and security gates. The 2025 memos are the anchor texts. I’m watching for signals such as common clause libraries, governmentwide “minimum vendor evidence” and how agencies operationalize “responsible AI” in source selections.
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) phased rollout and how quickly it becomes a de facto barrier to entry. Because the rollout is phased over multiple years starting in November 2025, 2026 is the first full year where you can observe how often contracting officers insert the clause and how primes enforce flow-downs. The watch signals include protest activity, supply-chain impacts and whether smaller firms get crowded out or supported.
Hettinger: Related to the GSA OneGov initiative, there’s continuing pressure on the middleman, that is to say resellers and systems integrators to deliver more value for less. This theme emerged in early 2025, but it will continue to be front and center throughout 2026. How those facing the pressure respond to the government’s interests will tell us a lot about how IT acquisition is going to change in the coming years. I’ll be watching that closely.
Mike Hettinger is president and founding principal of Hettinger Strategy Group and former staff director of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management.
The other place to watch more broadly is how the government is going to leverage AI. If 2025 was about putting the pieces in place to buy AI tools, 2026 is going to be about how agencies are able to leverage those tools to bring efficiency and effectiveness in a host of new areas.
Cornelius: The first is watching the Hill to see if the Senate can finally get the Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act passed and to the President’s desk. While a lot of great work has already happened — and will continue to happen — at GSA around OneGov, there is only so much they can do on their own. If Congress forces agencies to do the in-depth analysis and reporting required under SAMOSA, it will empower GSA, as well as OMB and Congress, to have the type of data and insights needed to drive OneGov beyond just cost savings to more enterprise transformation outcomes for their agency customers. This would generate value at an order of magnitude beyond what they have achieved thus far.
The second is the implementation of the recent executive order that created the Genesis Mission initiative. The mission is focused on ensuring that the Energy Department and the national labs can hire the right talent and marshal the right resources to help develop the next generation of biotechnology, quantum information science, advanced manufacturing and other critical capabilities empower America’s global leadership for the next few generations. Seeing how DOE and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) partner collaboratively with industry to execute this aspirational, but necessary, nationwide effort will be revelatory and insightful.
Cummins: Will Congress reverse its recent failure to reauthorize the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF)? President Donald Trump stood up the TMF during his first term and it saw a significant funding infusion by President Joe Biden. Watching the TMF just die with a whimper will make me pessimistic about reviving the longstanding bipartisan cooperation on modernizing federal IT that existed before the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
I will be closely watching how well the recently-announced Tech Force comes together. Its goal of recruiting top engineers to serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation sounds a lot like the U.S. Digital Service started by President Barack Obama, which then became the U.S. DOGE Service. I would like to see Tech Force building a better government with some of the enthusiasm that DOGE showed for cutting it.
Sieger: I’m watching intensely how agencies manage the IT talent exodus triggered by DOGE-mandated workforce reductions and return-to-office requirements. The unintended consequence we’re already observing is the disproportionate loss of mid-career technologists, the people who bridge legacy systems knowledge with modern cloud and AI capabilities.
Agencies are losing their most marketable IT talent first, while retention of personnel managing critical legacy infrastructure creates technical debt time bombs. At Guidehouse, we’re fielding unprecedented requests for cybersecurity, cloud architecture and data engineering services. The question heading into 2026 is whether agencies can rebuild sustainable IT operating models or whether they become permanently dependent on contractor support, fundamentally altering the government’s long-term technology capacity.
My prediction of the real risk is that mission-critical systems are losing institutional knowledge faster than documentation or modernization can compensate. Agencies need to watch and mitigate for increased system outages, security incidents, and failed modernization projects as this workforce disruption cascades through 2026.
Sticking with the above theme, it does bear watching how the new federal Tech Force hiring initiative succeeds. The federal Tech Force initiative signals a major shift in how the federal government sources and deploys modern technology talent. As agencies bring in highly skilled technologists focused on AI, cloud, cybersecurity and agile delivery, the expectations for speed, engineering rigor and product-centric outcomes will rise. This will reshape how agencies engage industry partners, favoring firms that can operate at comparable technical and cultural velocity.
The initiative also introduces private sector thinking into government programs, influencing requirements, architectures and vendor evaluations. This creates both opportunity and pressure. Organizations aligned to modern delivery models will gain advantage, while legacy approaches may struggle to adapt. Federal Tech Force serves as an early indicator of how workforce decisions are beginning to influence acquisition approaches and modernization priorities across government.
Dunne: Title 41 acquisition reform. The House Armed Services Committee and House Oversight Committee worked together to pass a 2026 defense authorization bill out of the House with civilian or governmentwide (Title 41) acquisition reform proposals. These reform proposals in the House NDAA bill included increasing various acquisition thresholds (micro-purchase and simplified acquisition thresholds and cost accounting standards) and language on advance payments to improve buying of cloud solutions. Unfortunately, these governmentwide provisions were left out of the final NDAA agreement, leaving in some cases different rules the civilian and defense sectors. I’m hopeful that Congress will try again on governmentwide acquisition reform.
Office of Centralized Acquisition Services (OCAS). GSA launched OCAS late this year to consolidate and streamline contracting for common goods and services in accordance with the March 2025 executive order (14240). Always a good exercise to think about how to best consolidate and streamline contracting vehicles. We’ve been here before and I think OCAS has a tough mission as agencies often want to do their own thing. If given sufficient resources and leadership attention, perhaps it will be different this time.
FedRAMP 20x. Earlier this year, GSA’s FedRAMP program management office launched FedRAMP 20x to reform the process and bring efficiencies through automation and expand the availability of cloud service provider products for agencies. All great intentions, but as we move into the next phase of the effort and into FedRAMP moderate type solutions, I hope the focus remains on the security mission and the original intent to measure once, use many times for the benefit of agencies. Also, FedRAMP authorization expires in December 2027 – which is not that far away in congressional time.
Alboum: In the coming year, I’m paying close attention to how agencies manage AI efficiency and value as they move from pilots to production. As budgets tighten, agencies need a clearer picture of which models are delivering results, which aren’t, and where investments are being duplicated.
I’m also watching enterprise acquisition and software asset management efforts. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act has been floating around Congress for the last few years. I’m curious to see whether it will ultimately become law. Its provisions reflect widely acknowledged best practices for controlling software spending and align with the administration’s PMA objective to “consolidate and standardize systems, while eliminating duplicative ones.” How agencies manage their software portfolios will be a crucial test of whether efficiency goals are turning into lasting structural change, or just short-term fixes.
Derrios: I’ll be watching how GSA’s OneGov initiative shapes up will be important because contract consolidation without an equal focus on demand forecasting, standardization and potential requirements aggregation may not yield the intended results. There needs to be a strong focus on acquisition planning between GSA and their federal agency customers in addition to any movement of contracts.
In 2025, the administration revamped the FAR, which hadn’t been reviewed holistically in 40 years. So in 2026, what IT/acquisition topic(s) would you like to see the administration take on that has long been overlooked and/or underappreciated for the impact change and improvements could have, and why?
Cummins: Despite the recent Trump administration emphasis on commercialization, it is still too hard for innovative companies to break into the federal market. Sometimes agencies will move mountains to urgently acquire a new technology, like we have seen recently with some artificial intelligence and drones initiatives. But a commercial IT company generally has to partner with a reseller and get third-party accreditation (CMMC, FedRAMP, etc.) just to get access to a federal customer. Moving beyond the FAR rewrite, could the government give up some of the intellectual property and other requirements that make it difficult for commercial companies to bid as a prime or sell directly to an agency outside of an other transaction agreement (OTA)? It would also be helpful to see more FedRAMP waivers for low-risk cloud services.
Cornelius: It’s been almost 50 years since foundational law and policy set the parameters we still follow today around IT accessibility. During my time in the Senate, I drafted the provision in the 2023 omnibus appropriations bill that required GSA and federal agencies to perform comprehensive assessments of accessibility compliance across all IT and digital assets throughout the government. Now, with a couple years of analysis and with many thoughtful recommendations from GSA and OMB, it is time for Congress to make critical updates in law to improve the accessibility of any capabilities the government acquires or deploys. 2026 could be a year of rare bipartisan, bicameral collaboration on digital accessibility, which could then underpin the administration’s American by Design initiative and ensure important accessibility outcomes from all vendors serving government customers are delivered and maintained effectively.
Derrios: The federal budgeting process really needs a reboot. Static budgets do not align with multi-year missions where risks are continuous, technology changes at lightning speed, and world events impact aging cost estimates. And without a real “return on investment” mentality incorporated into the budgeting process, under-performing programs with high sunk-costs will continue to be supported. But taxpayers shouldn’t have to sit through a bad movie just because they already paid for the ticket.
Brown: I’m watching how agencies continue to move toward the implementation of zero trust and how the data layer becomes the budget fight. With federal guides emphasizing data security, the 2026 question becomes, do programs converge on fewer, interoperable controls, or do they keep buying overlapping tools? My watch signals include requirements that prioritize data tagging/classification, attribute-based access, encryption/key management and auditability as “must haves” in acquisitions.
Alboum: Over the past few years, the federal government has made significant investments in customer experience and service delivery. The question now is whether those gains can be sustained amid federal staffing reductions.
Jonathan Alboum is a former chief information officer at the Agriculture Department and now federal chief technology officer for ServiceNow.
This challenge is closely tied to the “America by Design” executive order, which calls for redesigned websites where people interact with the government. A beautiful, easy-to-use website is an excellent start. However, the public expects a great end-to-end experience across all channels, which aligns directly with the administration’s PMA objective to build digital services for “real people, not bureaucracy.”
So, I’ll be watching to see if we meet these expectations by investing in AI and other technologies to lock in previous gains and improve the way we serve the public. With the proper focus, I’m confident that we can positively impact the public’s perception and trust in government.
Hettinger: Set aside the know and historic challenges with the TMF, we really do need to figure out how to more effectively buy IT at a pace consistent with the need of agencies. Maybe some of that is addressed in the FAR changes, but those are only going to take us so far (no pun intended). If we think outside the box, maybe we can find a way to make real progress in IT funding and acquisition in a way that gets the right technology tools in the hands of the right people more quickly.
Dunne: I think follow through on the initiatives launched in 2025 will be important to focus on in 2026. The formal rulemaking process for the RFO will launch in 2026 and will be an important part of that follow through. And now that we have a confirmed Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, I think 2026 will be an important year for industry engagement on topics like the RFO.
Sieger: If the administration could tackle one long-overlooked issue with transformative impact, it should be the modernization of security clearances are granted, maintained and reciprocally recognized for contractor personnel supporting federal IT initiatives.
The current clearance system regularly creates 6-to-12 month delays in staffing critical IT programs, particularly in cybersecurity and AI. Agencies lose qualified contractors to private sector opportunities during lengthy adjudication periods. The lack of true clearance reciprocity means contractors moving between agency projects often restart the process, wasting resources and creating knowledge gaps on programs.
This is a strategic vulnerability. Federal IT modernization depends on contractor expertise for specialized skills government cannot hire directly. When clearance processes take longer than typical IT project phases, agencies either compromise on talent quality or delay mission-critical initiatives. The opportunity cost is measured in delayed outcomes and increased cyber risk.
Implementing continuous vetting for contractor populations, establishing true cross-agency clearance reciprocity, and creating “clearance portability” would benefit emerging technology areas such as AI, quantum, advanced cybersecurity, where talent competition is fiercest. From Guidehouse’s perspective, we see clients are repeatedly unable to staff approved projects because cleared personnel aren’t available, not because talent doesn’t exist.
This reform would have cascading benefits: faster modernization, better talent retention, reduced costs and improved security through continuous monitoring rather than point-in-time investigations.
If 2025 has been all about cost savings and efficiencies, what do you think will emerge as the buzzword of 2026?
Brown: “Speed to capability” acquisition models spreading beyond DoD. The drone scaling example is a concrete indicator of a broader push. The watch signals for me are increased use of rapid pathways, shorter contract terms, modular contracting and more frequent recompetes to keep pace with technology change.
Cornelius: Governmentwide human resource transformation.
Julie Dunne, a former House Oversight and Reform Committee staff member for the Republicans, a former commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration, and now a principal at Monument Advocacy.
Dunne: AI again. How the government uses it to facilitate delivery of citizen services and how AI tools will assist with the acquisition process, and AI-enabled cybersecurity attacks. I know that’s not one word, but it’s a huge risk to watch and only a matter of time before our adversaries find success in attacking federal systems with an AI-enabled cyberattack, and federal contractors will be on the hook to mitigate such risks.
Cummins: Fraud prevention. While combating waste, fraud and abuse is a perennial issue, the industrial scale fraud revealed in Minnesota highlights a danger from how Congress passed COVID pandemic-era spending packages without the same level of checks and balances that were put in place for earlier Obama-era stimulus spending. Federal government programs generally still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to preventing improper payments, such as by using better identity and access management and other security tools. Stopping fraud is also one of the few remaining areas of bipartisan agreement among policymakers.
Hettinger: DOGE may be gone, or maybe it’s not really gone, but I don’t know that cost savings and efficiencies are going to be pushed to the backburner. This administration comes at everything — at least from an IT perspective — as believing it can be done better, faster and cheaper. I expect that to continue not just into 2026 but for the rest of this administration.
Derrios: I think there will have to be a focus on how government needs and requirements are defined and how the remaining workforce can upskill to use technology as a force multiplier. If you don’t focus on what you’re buying and whether it constitutes a legitimate mission support need, any cost savings gained in 2025 will not be sustainable long-term. Balancing speed-to-contract and innovative buying methodologies with real requirements rigor is critical. And how your federal workforce uses the tools in the toolbox to yield maximum outcomes while trying to do more with less is going to take focused leadership. To me, all of this culminates in one word for 2026, and that’s producing “value” for federal missions.
Sieger: Resilient innovation. While 2025 focused intensely on cost savings and efficiencies, particularly through DOGE-mandated cuts, 2026’s emerging buzzword will be “resilient innovation.” Agencies are recognizing the need to continue advancing technological capabilities while maintaining operational continuity under constrained resources and heightened uncertainty.
The efficiency drives of 2025 exposed real vulnerabilities. Agencies lost institutional knowledge, critical systems became more fragile, and the pace of modernization actually slowed in many cases as talent departed and budgets tightened. Leaders now recognize that efficiency without resilience creates brittleness—systems that work well under ideal conditions but fail catastrophically when stressed.
Resilient innovation captures the dual mandate facing federal IT in 2026: Continue modernizing and adopting transformative technologies like AI, but do so in ways that don’t create new single points of failure, vendor dependencies or operational risks. It’s about building systems and capabilities that can absorb shocks — whether from workforce turnover, budget cuts, cyber incidents or geopolitical disruption — while still moving forward.
Alboum: Looking ahead, governance will take the center stage across government. As AI, data and cybersecurity continue to scale, agencies will need stronger oversight, greater transparency and better coordination to manage complexity and maintain public trust. Governance won’t be a side conversation — it will be the foundation for everything that comes next.
Success will no longer be measured by how much AI is deployed, but by whether it is secure, compliant and delivering tangible mission value. The conversation will shift from “Do we have AI?” to “Is our AI safe, accurate and worth the investment?”
As a tumultuous year for the federal workforce comes to a close, many employees are in a much different position now than they were at the start of 2025.
The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce staffing across agencies resulted in the loss of more than 317,000 federal employees governmentwide. It’s a 13.7% decrease compared with September 2024 workforce numbers, Office of Personnel Management data shows.
At the same time, 68,000 new federal employees joined the civil service during 2025, according to OPM Director Scott Kupor. Combining both attrition and hiring data, the administration’s changes over the course of 2025 amounted to a net staffing decrease of about 10.8%.
Kupor touted the results as exceeding the administration’s goals, saying relatively few losses were due to reductions in force (RIFs) and firings of probationary employees. Out of all employees who left their jobs in the last year, “over 92% did so voluntarily,” he said, mainly via the deferred resignation program (DRP).
“None of this is to minimize the impact of anyone losing a job, but the ‘mass firing’ headlines do not in fact tell the full story,” Kupor wrote in a Dec. 10 post on X.
But some federal workforce experts argue that the administration’s reductions in 2025 amounted to a “forced exodus.” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, pointed to what he said have become “dangerous gaps” in key federal services, like food safety inspection, Social Security processing, veterans’ healthcare and disaster response.
“This loss of expertise directly harms Americans’ access to critical services and will take decades to repair,” Stier told Federal News Network.
Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) also pushed back against the idea of the administration’s DRP being “voluntary.” He said many feds who left government felt they had no choice — they felt threatened they would be fired anyway, if they did not leave through the DRP.
“Federal workers were hit with DOGE, watched agencies shutter, were threatened with imminent reductions in force, demagogued and bombarded with those mindless ‘5 things’ emails,” Walkinshaw said Dec. 11. “Nothing about that was voluntary — the ‘fork in the road’ was coercion.”
Still, the workforce cuts so far align with the Trump administration’s overall goal to “downsize the federal workforce,” as the Office of Management and Budget recently laid out in the new President’s Management Agenda. Specifically, the administration said it is targeting cuts of “unnecessary positions” and “poor performers,” while emphasizing more efficiency.
“We’ve seen significant success in right-sizing the federal workforce and addressing performance issues,” Eric Ueland, OMB’s deputy director for management, said during a Dec. 9 Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council meeting.
The workforce reductions hit some agencies harder than others. The top three agencies facing staffing reductions are the departments of Defense, Agriculture and Treasury — with Treasury’s reductions mostly concentrated within the IRS, according to research from the Partnership for Public Service.
By scale, DoD has seen the largest staffing reduction across government. The department lost over 61,600 employees during 2025 — a total of about 8% of its total workforce.
Following just behind DoD, the Treasury Department lost more than 31,600 employees, yielding a staffing reduction of nearly 28%.
And at USDA, the loss of more than 21,600 employees over the last year amounted to a roughly 22% staffing decrease overall.
But other agencies, such as USAID and the Education Department, saw even deeper cuts to their workforces, despite being smaller agencies by volume.
Governmentwide, the loss of more than 300,000 federal employees has shown up in a multitude of ways. At the IRS, for instance, an agency watchdog warned there will likely be issues with the 2026 tax filing season, as a direct result of the 25% cut to the IRS workforce. And at USDA, the staffing reductions are affecting the work of some of the department’s underlying agencies.
The Partnership for Public Service said the cuts are harming communities as well. An analysis of more than 530 stories on the federal government throughout 2025 shows the impacts of the federal workforce reductions across the country.
“Notably, more than 45% of these stories involve harms to science-related sectors, including agricultural research, healthcare and public land management,” the Partnership said. “Together, they show the direct, tangible consequences these changes are having on individuals, organizations and communities.”
Over the course of 2025, the impacts also continued to spread. In a survey the Partnership conducted in September, 46% of respondents said they or someone they know had been impacted by the government cuts. That’s up from 29% of respondents who said the same in March.
Still, there are many who view the Trump administration’s changes positively. About 80% of those who are supportive of the federal workforce overhauls said they believe the changes will make their communities and lives better, the Partnership’s September survey found. But even among those who were supportive of the changes, 41% still expressed concerns about a loss of experience and knowledge in the federal workforce in the short term.
The changes are impacting many who have stayed in their jobs as well. Federal employees are experiencing disruptions in the workplace at a rate far higher than the national average, according to a recent Gallup survey.
Close to one-third — about 29% — of federal employees say their workplace has been disrupted “to a very large extent.” That’s nearly triple the 10% of U.S. employees who say the same, Gallup found. Across the federal workforce, it’s leading to increases in stress and loneliness, as well as a decline in employee engagement.
Robert Shea, a federal workforce policy expert and former OMB official from the George W. Bush administration, said the workforce changes have had a “chilling effect” on leaders across the career civil service — something he believes will continue into 2026 and beyond.
“Many career officials are now more cautious about how, when and whether they offer professional advice,” Shea told Federal News Network. “That’s particularly when that advice could be perceived as resistance rather than implementation.”
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