By Scott Calvert FollowET
Retired business owner Catherine Byrd is thrilled with President Trump’s push to shrink what she considers a bloated federal workforce. And she isn’t at all concerned for the tens of thousands of people losing jobs.
“I don’t feel bad for them a bit. I’ve worked in the private sector all my life,” and got laid off from jobs in the early days, the Georgia resident said. “You know what you do? You go out and find another job, and there are plenty of jobs to find.”
While there is outcry over thousands of federal workers losing their jobs to Department of Government Efficiency cuts and the chaos that has unleashed, a cohort of Americans aren’t sorry to see them go. Politics, personal experiences filing taxes or time in interminable post office and DMV lines lead many people to take a dim view of government workers at all levels.
Resentment also stems from a sense that federal workers enjoy perks, like guaranteed pensions, which are rare in the private sector.
Government employees overall have long experienced a lower rate of layoffs than their private-sector counterparts, especially during shocks such as the early days of Covid-19, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show. Federal employees also tend to spend less time unemployed because they are less likely to lose their jobs than workers in the private sector, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“How many people get fired from a government position? Not many,” said Randy Johnson, 75, a retired math teacher in Tennessee who voted for Trump. He also said he doesn’t hear enough about how the cuts might be “a good thing to try to reduce the size of government.”
The idea that government workers are a problem, not a plus, has long been a talking point on the right. Former President Ronald Reagan famously quipped that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Trump has said he thinks the federal payroll is laden with people who aren’t doing their jobs. Polls show public trust in the federal government has plunged over the past seven decades.
Pew Research Center surveys in recent years show Americans roughly split on whether the government is too big or too small, but there is a stark partisan divide. A Pew poll this year found 38% of Republicans expressing confidence in federal career employees, compared with 72% of Democrats.
“Democrats have tended to favor a government that does more to solve problems. Republicans have been more likely to say the government does too much,” said Jocelyn Kiley, the Pew Research Center’s director of politics research. The country cut more than 400,000 federal jobs during the eight-year Clinton administration.
Robert Shapiro, professor of government at Columbia University, said public support for federal workers varies widely, with agencies such as the military, Social Security, Medicare and national parks generally viewed more favorably. “There’s actually a lot more support there for specific aspects of a more expansive government,” he said.
Polling reveals a more muddled view of the Department of Government Efficiency’s workforce-slashing efforts. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month showed 59% support for downsizing the government, and another poll this month, conducted by Quinnipiac University, found 60% disapproved of the way Elon Musk and DOGE are dealing with federal workers.