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Economy

Trump's government lost 426,000 workers in 18 months. Black workers took the biggest hit.

Nearly 1 in 5 federal workers left. Black federal employment fell about 20%, by survey estimates, while white employment fell about 4%.

Trump's government lost 426,000 workers in 18 months. Black workers took the biggest hit.
Stock photo. Photo by kate.sade on Unsplash

About 426,000 full-time federal employees left the government in the first 18 months of President Trump's second term, nearly 1 in 5 of the roughly 2.2 million he inherited, according to a Washington Post analysis of Office of Personnel Management data published Oct. 29. Black workers, who hold a larger share of federal jobs than of jobs overall, took the biggest hit.

The Post found that turnover ran far above normal: about 1 in 7 federal workers left during President Biden's term, and about 1 in 8 during Trump's first term. The biggest single wave, about 121,000 people, left in September 2025, when the administration's deferred resignation and early retirement offers took effect.

What the government's own numbers show

The government's data backs up the scale. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 2,682,000 federal jobs in September 2026, down from 3,010,000 in January 2025. That is 328,000 fewer jobs, a 10.9% drop. (The BLS count includes the Postal Service, so it runs higher than OPM's.)

OPM's own workforce site puts the net loss at 264,029 employees since Jan. 20, 2025, as of August 2026. That is close to the Post's estimate of a 255,000-worker net decline after new hires, which left a workforce of about 1.94 million, down 12%.

Most departures were recorded as resignations or retirements. The Post counted about 32,000 workers who were fired outright. OPM says 139,978 employees took the deferred resignation offer, and the Government Accountability Office found agencies spent about $6.7 billion paying deferred-resignation workers who were on paid leave instead of working in 2025.

Black workers lost the most

As of September 2024, Black employees held about 428,000 federal jobs, or 19% of the workforce, compared with about 12% of the U.S. population, according to the Post. That was the last time the government published those figures. OPM no longer releases federal workforce data by race, sex or disability, the Partnership for Public Service reported. That loss is part of a wider pullback on federal data.

Without that data, the Post turned to the monthly household survey the Census Bureau runs for the BLS. By its estimate, Black federal employment fell about 30% from late 2024 to late 2025, while other groups fell about 4%. Comparing January through September 2026 with the same months of 2024, Black federal employment was down about 20%, while white employment fell about 4% and Hispanic employment rose about 6%. Survey estimates for a group this size carry wide margins of error, but the gap is large.

The Post also found that more than half of the workers in offices named for closure in a DOGE planning document were Black. Of 93 federal employees named on a "DEI Watchlist" website run by the American Accountability Foundation, 28 are now unemployed, and 23 of them are Black.

Why it matters beyond Washington

Federal jobs have long been a path into the middle class for Black families. The Economic Policy Institute wrote that the government's hiring and promotion protections "supported a robust Black middle class," and that Black workers made up about 36% of the staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education, based on 2024 OPM data. Sarah Javaid, a senior research analyst at the National Women's Law Center, said federal jobs offered that path "especially for Black workers, women and others who face workplace discrimination."

The losses show up in the wider job market. The Black unemployment rate was 7.0% in September 2026, up from 6.2% in January 2025 and nearly double the 3.6% rate for white workers, according to the BLS.

OPM Director Scott Kupor has said the vast majority of people who left did so voluntarily, through early retirement or deferred resignation. That is true of how departures were coded, but it leaves out the pressure. The 2025 offer told workers who stayed that the administration could not promise the certainty of their jobs, NPR reported, and agencies went on to lay off more than 10,000 workers through reductions in force by January 2026, according to the Partnership for Public Service. A White House official said the government follows all Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rules on discrimination. The administration offered no data to back that up, and it has stopped publishing the race data that would let the public check.

If you're a federal worker weighing an offer to leave, read what to check before you sign. If you believe you were pushed out because of your race, federal rules give you just 45 days from the action to contact your agency's EEO counselor, so move quickly and talk to a lawyer.

Sources

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