2025-01-29
9 分钟Npr.
The federal government is the largest employer in the country, not counting the military.
The federal civil Service employs around 3 million people.
We're talking clerks, nurses, engineers, lawyers, janitors.
Welders, park rangers, and postal workers.
And get this, Darin, I just learned this today.
The federal government even employs bakers.
I know where to get my government bread from there.
And so the basic picture is the federal workforce is massive.
It's also a workforce President Trump really wants to shrink and reshape.
Yesterday, he offered buyouts to workers who don't want to go back to the office.
And last week, he issued a bunch of new orders, including a hiring freeze and a plan to prioritize job seekers who are, quote, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, unquote.
And while Trump's actions have drawn criticism and thrown some agencies into chaos, some argue that there's actually an opportunity here.
This is the indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Adrienne Ma.
And I'm Darian Woods.
Today on the show, we talk with Jennifer Palke.
She's a senior fellow at the Niskanen center who has spent years thinking and writing and doing government reform.
She also served as deputy chief technology officer under President Obama, and she was an advisor to the Defense Department during President Trump's first term.
After the break, she will explain why, in her view, government hiring has been broken for a long time and what she thinks about Trump's current proposals to fix it.