welcome
PBS

PBS

US Politics

US Politics

Trump has moved to slash the federal government. Here’s what the data shows about its workforce

PBS
Summary
Nutrition label

82% Informative

Federal workers live and work in all 50 states and overseas.

About 1 in 5 people who work for the government were employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs .

About 276,000 employees of agencies like the FBI and Secret Service whose location in the U.S. was a secret.

About 454,000 federal employees do work in D.C. , Maryland and Virginia .

About 1 in 4 federal workers were veterans, outpacing the wider civilian labor force.

Nursing is the occupation with the greatest number of federal employees ( around 111,000 ), followed by IT management ( around 101,000 ) The average federal worker salary was about $106,000 in 2024 .

The average length of service for a federal government employee was just under 12 years .