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- The DOGE office’s actions have led to over 216,000 firings, a new report found.
- Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.’s report is the most comprehensive look at scale of the group’s firings.
- Elon Musk, the de facto leader of the DOGE office, has seen his popularity tumble amid the firings.
The White House DOGE office’s actions have led to 216,670 job cuts of federal workers and contractors in March, according to a new report by a global outplacement firm.
The DOGE office has only sparingly confirmed specific numbers of layoffs, meaning Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.’s report is one of few estimates of the sheer size of its actions.
Challenger found that DOGE office actions accounted for the majority of job cuts that are now the third-highest monthly total ever recorded since the firm began tracking the data in 1989. The other highest months came in April and May of 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a statement. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off. Major changes remain as the White House pushes to dismantle the Department of Education. DOGE actions to effectively end the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) continue to be litigated in federal court.
The government led all sectors in job cuts last month, the firm found. Challenger said the DOGE office’s actions have led to a 624% increase in government layoffs compared to the first quarter of 2024.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s push to reorganize the federal government has become the biggest story of Trump’s second term.
On Wednesday, the White House downplayed a Politico report that Musk will leave the Trump administration soon due to the 130-day deadline for special government employees that would be up in either late May or early June. Musk’s popularity has cratered amid his de facto leadership of the DOGE office, harming both Republican candidates and Tesla’s bottom line.
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