GOVERNMENT & POWER • BUREAUCRACY
Friday morning, BLS drops the May jobs report. This is the backstory. Since October 2024, more than one in nine federal civilian workers is gone — 348,000 people in eighteen months. The deepest, fastest federal restructuring since the post-WWII demobilization. Eisenhower’s famous 1953 cut? 195,000. Reagan’s 1981 reset? Around 46,000. Whether you cheer it or curse it, you’re watching a shift in the size of the federal government with no parallel in seventy years… the number doesn’t debate. It just is.
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Eisenhower cut 195,000 federal jobs and it made the history books — this run is 153,000 deeper, and it isn’t finished.
