Federal workers are now back to working in the office at a higher percentage than their private sector counterparts, according to data released this week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and reported by The Washington Times.
The April jobs report indicated that 81.8% of federal workers said they went into the office versus 79.2% in the private sector, the lowest level of teleworking for government workers since prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. Nearly 11% of private-sector employees worked “some hours” from home, compared to 8.5% of federal workers. The Labor Department study indicated 9.8% of private-sector employees “teleworked all hours” compared to 9.7% of federal workers.
Since the onset of the government downsizing by led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, over 56,000 federal workers have been laid off, around 75,000 have accepted buyouts, and another 146,000 reductions planned in the weeks ahead, according to The New York Times. These huge numbers of workers will all be flooding an already stressed job market, making the prospect of finding a new job quickly unlikely and meaning that those who stick around are quick to fall in line with the new administration’s “return to work” mandate.
One the first policies signed by President Donald Trump was the “Return to In-Person Work” executive order that ordered all department and agency heads to “make all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”
On April 21, the Office of Management and Budget advised federal employees in a memo that it would monitor and report occupancy data in public buildings that are leased by the federal government. The monitoring will be done to “shrink the Federal real estate footprint to eliminate unused and wasteful Federal office space.” The reports will also be used to “ensure compliance” with the president’s return-to-office policy, the OMB said.
“President Trump promised to make our federal government more accountable, transparent and efficient. The Trump administration is delivering on this promise by making federal employees return to the office and better serve the American people,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the outlet.
Many federal employees have reluctantly accepted the return to work order but not without expressing a healthy level of disdain. Speaking to USA Today in March, Department of Defense employees noted the filled parking lots, cramped working conditions an inadequate meeting and lunch areas once they returned to a building that had been nearly vacant for five years. One Defence employee speaking on a condition of anonymity said forcing employees back to the office has killed morale.
“We honestly get way more done at home than at the office, but those are facts and no one seems to want to know facts anymore,” he told the outlet “This will end up costing the government much more money than it will ever save.”
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