WASHINGTON — Tech titan Elon Musk celebrated the year-end success of his efforts to slash the federal workforce, as data show a nearly 9% reduction in the federal workforce that once employed more than 3 million people.
“The matrix was reprogrammed,” the former Department of Government Efficiency chief tweeted, highlighting a graph made by Cato Institute economics researcher Krit Chanwong and institute vice president for policy Alex Nowrasteh.
The libertarian think-tank reported in a blog post that “a decline that large has not happened since the military demobilizations at the end of World War II and the Korean War.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics data maintained online by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank show that there were 2.744 million federal workers as of November, down from 3.015 million in January when Musk kicked off his chainsaw-wielding DOGE initiative when President Trump re-entered office.
The roughly 271,000 people who exited federal roles include about 154,000 who took buyouts and others who were cut through a series of scorched-earth mass-terminations that hit agencies such as the now-eliminated formerly 10,000-man USAID.
The current federal employment was slightly lower in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama and between much of 2003 and 2007 under George W. Bush.
The civilian workforce has not been less than 2.7 million since 1966 — when the US population was 42% smaller than it is today — meaning that further reductions in Trump could set 60-year lows next year.
Musk, who recently rekindled his relationship with Trump after a bitter falling out in June, did not celebrate a less-flattering assessment made by the Cato scholars: that DOGE’s work didn’t result in lower federal spending.
In fact, federal spending was higher each month of Trump’s first year back in office than under former President Joe Biden, Changwong and Nowrasteh found by analyzing Treasury Department monthly statements.
The US government has spent $7.6 trillion in 2025 as of November, according to the report, topping $7.412 trillion spent by Biden in the same period in 2024 and exceeding the Democrat’s spending rates in 2023 ($6.5 trillion), 2022 ($6.27 trillion) and 2021 ($6.5 trillion).
At least some of the explanation for the higher spending comes from elevated interest rates, which ratcheted higher in 2022 due to soaring inflation and that have slowly trended downward.
Trump has vowed to appoint a new Federal Reserve chairman in May who will further cut interest rates, saying publicly it would save the government a fortune due to the fact that 17% of federal spending goes toward serving the national debt.
“An observer who did not know when DOGE started could not identify it in [monthly spending charts],” the Cato experts wrote.
“DOGE failed to cut spending because most federal spending was for entitlement programs where spending remains high due to structural reasons and policy autopilot,” the experts wrote. “Congress alone has the authority to cut these programs, so it’s unsurprising that DOGE did not reduce spending.”
The assessment found that “any changes in spending during DOGE’s tenure compared to the CBO projection coincided with a rescission bill,” through which Trump in July cut $9 billion in previously appropriated federal funding for foreign aid, National Public Radio and PBS.
Trump in September axed another $5 billion in foreign aid in a rare “pocket rescission” that bypassed Congress and was first reported by The Post.
