Today’s jobs report marks the seventh Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report to capture at least some of the workforce restructuring and agency-level staffing adjustments initiated after the new administration issued Executive Order (EO) 14210 on “Reforming the Federal Workforce to Better Serve Americans.”
As of August 2025, there were 2.92 million federal government workers, excluding active military personnel. However, 593,000 of those workers were Postal Service employees. Excluding Postal Service workers, there were 2.33 million federal government workers. This is a decline of 11,300 from last month, and a total decline in the federal workforce of 85,300 this year.
Third Round of Deferred Resignations
After the Office of Personnel Management first implemented the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) in January, approximately 21,000 workers left the Department of Defense (DoD). DRP involves voluntary resignations with continued pay through September or December. The Army authorized another DRP round for commands to offer employees in eliminated surplus positions.
Now the DoD is launching a third round of DRP. This round applies to commands that must continue downsizing and restructuring their workforce in order to reduce the need for future reductions or realignments. As of August 2025, approximately 15,000 employees have been approved to participate in the program.
Proposed Changes to Federal Worker Pay
After previously indicating that he would freeze civilian salaries for 2026, President Trump submitted a pay plan to Congress on August 29 that would see a 1% pay increase with locality pay frozen. The president noted: “My alternative pay plan will further my administration's efforts to create an excellent and efficient federal workforce of the highest caliber while maintaining fiscal responsibility.”
Law enforcement workers are set to receive a 3.8% increase in pay, however, in line with military raises. The documents direct the Office of Personnel Management to decide which categories of law enforcement will receive this larger raise.
It is worth noting that Trump also proposed pay freezes in three of the four years of his first term, but each time Congress overruled him, providing raises of 1.4% to 2.6%. As of March this year, the average salary of federal workers was approximately $110,000.
Alternative Estimates
The Partnership for Public Service has a federal workforce tracker that is updated monthly. As of August 26, the organization estimates that 199,000 federal workers have left the workforce. However, this figure includes normal attrition, while excluding reinstatements and judicial reversals. These figures, therefore, tend to inflate the actual reduction in the size of the federal workforce.
BLS numbers implicitly incorporate reinstatements (since those workers show back up on payroll). If we combine the BLS figures for federal workers no longer on government payrolls with those still on payroll under the DRP, and with those DoD workers who accepted DRP in August, then we get a total workforce reduction number of roughly 254,000.
Shrinking the Federal Workforce: Trump vs. Clinton
Reducing the number of federal employees by the same amount that the Clinton administration did during his first term would require shrinking the federal workforce to fewer than 2.08 million workers by 2028. Reducing the size of the federal workforce back to the Clinton era lows of 1999 would require shrinking that number down to 1.88 million.
The first figure below shows the month-by-month comparison between workforce reductions under the Clinton administration and those under the current Trump administration. The second shows the Trump administration’s efforts so far in relation to the ultimate goal of matching the scale of Clinton’s cuts.
This series covers workforce reductions, agency restructuring efforts and any new policies or developments related to these initiatives. Stay tuned for regular updates on the Trump administration’s progress toward achieving its federal workforce reduction goals.
You can read my previous updates for February, March, April, May, June and July.