The Trump administration is threatening to lay off thousands of federal workers if the government shutdown continues.
Amid the lapse in congressional appropriations that began Oct. 1, President Donald Trump has signaled plans to cut “Democrat Agencies” and “Democrat programs,” without specifying which agencies and programs he had in mind.
And he has repeatedly warned that the shutdown will lead to “substantial” permanent job losses if the impasse is not soon resolved. Previous government shutdowns have not led to mass firings.
But Trump and his administration raised the threat of layoffs even before the shutdown began: The U.S. Office of Management and Budget, in a late September memo, instructed certain agencies to start considering laying off some workers.
“This administration believes firmly that federal government employees serve at the pleasure of the president,” said Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. “And so they are targeting those employees and programs and projects that are not in alignment with the goals the administration is trying to achieve.”
On the eve of the shutdown, a group of labor unions representing federal workers filed a lawsuit alleging Trump’s threats of mass firings are illegal. Nearly 30% of federal workers are union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Conservatives, who have long sought to reduce the size of the federal workforce, say Trump should not be hamstrung.
“The president should be able to lead. They should not have to deal with unions,” Donald Devine, a senior scholar at conservative organization The Fund for American Studies, said in an interview with CNBC.
Devine, who led the Office of Personnel Management during former President Ronald Reagan’s first term, oversaw the removal of more than 100,000 workers from the federal payrolls.
He is also a co-author of a chapter from “Mandate for Leadership,” also known as “Project 2025,” the right-wing guide to overhauling the government from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
Trump claimed during the 2024 ABC News presidential debate that he had “nothing to do with Project 2025.” But multiple contributors to the project later became Trump administration officials, including White House budget chief Russell Vought, top trade advisor Peter Navarro and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr.
Among many other plans, Project 2025 proposes drastically slashing the federal workforce — by more than 1 million employees, according to one tally.
“The idea isn’t, per se, to let them go. The idea is to try to make the system work,” Devine told CNBC.
Approximately 2.9 million people were employed by the federal government as of August, according to the BLS. An estimated 154,000 workers took a buyout offered earlier this year by the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, government workers furloughed during the shutdown will not receive pay until federal funding resumes.
“Morale is probably the lowest I’ve ever seen it,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, in an interview with CNBC.
Watch the video above to see why the government is threatening to lay off thousands of workers.
