The number of employees on the federal government’s payroll has dropped by 277,000 since President Donald Trump took office for his second term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. 

The agency said in its monthly jobs report that federal employment was 2.738 million in November, adjusted for seasonal variations, down from 3.015 million in January. 

Story by Gregory Korte and Adrienne Tong

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce in 2025 hit every major agency last year — with cabinet departments including Education, Housing and Treasury taking the brunt of the downsizing, according to government data released Thursday.

More than 322,000 employees have left agencies since Trump took office, with departures outpacing new hires by more than three-to-one. The figures from the Office of Personnel Management — the most up-to-date snapshot of federal employment data — show the workforce undergoing its most dramatic transformation in decades. That followed Trump’s move to enact a hiring freeze on his first day in office and put Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk in charge of a wide-ranging effort to cut government spending. 

The Education Department, which Trump has vowed to dismantle, shed some 39% of its headcount between January and November 2025. The workforce shrank 23% at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and was slashed by 21% at Treasury over the same period.