9 Charts on Government Efficiency

Depending on where you stand, President Trump’s latest maneuver to shrink the federal workforce is either a long-overdue reform or a reckless gutting of government. Here are some key data points to arm yourself with.

1. The size of the federal workforce hasn’t ticked up all that much since the 1950s.

2. While the total workforce hasn’t increased by much, the number of full-time administrative employees in government has ballooned considerably over the past two decades, rising at a faster rate than other professions.

3. More government jobs are shifting away from frontline work and into administration, suggesting concerns about bureaucratic bloat aren’t unfounded.

4. By some outside metrics—like the World Bank’s global ranking of most efficient governments—American bureaucracy doesn’t fare too badly.

5. But the Government Accountability Office—a nonpartisan watchdog located in the legislative branch—has flagged persistent shortcomings in how the federal government operates.

   (The chart below shows federal spending on entitlements has risen to unsustainable levels and will exceed government revenues in a matter of decades)

6. Since 1990, the list of government programs the GAO rates as vulnerable to waste, fraud and mismanagement has more than doubled.

7. For instance, one 2018 analysis revealed that while the budget for the Health and Human Services Inspector General’s office climbed 16% since 2012, its productivity—measured by audits, evaluations, and investigations—has steadily declined.

8. Per an analysis conducted by a prominent X user, “r/fednews (the largest subreddit for federal workers) seems to be most active during working hours.”

9. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s plan to downsize the government is his most well-received policy yet.

Context: On one side, you’ve got the Elonites who think federal employees don’t do much and want to treat the government like X/Twitter, where Musk famously slashed the headcount by roughly 80%.

• On the other side, you have people concerned that slashing the federal workforce by such a huge amount is going to break stuff and lead to the breakdown of basic functionality.

• Already there have been some bumps along the road, with the Trump administration this week rescinding an order that froze most federal grants and loans.

Bubba’s Two Cents

Overhauling a bloated bureaucracy was never going to be seamless, and the current debate is fixated on layoffs and slashing the government. But what if the more lasting change comes not from cutting, but from technology? Trump has floated the idea of using AI to make government more efficient, similar to Obama’s push to digitize services. These tech-centric reforms could end up being more transformative—and less politically divisive—than sweeping personnel cuts.