👉Some facts about the mass government layoff Trump just ordered.

Hours ago people started reporting that Trump has ordered the Office of Personnel Management to have all agencies terminate probationary employees, but what exactly does that mean, and how many might be affected?

Probationary Period
Depending on the agency, and sometimes on the specific position, all new government employees are legally on probation until they have completed 1 or 2 years in their job. After that special civil service protections kick in that make it hard to fire them (in most cases). From available data Grok estimates that 1,367,000 federal employees were hired during the last two years of the Biden admin, with a massive uptick in November 2024 as woke administrators rushed to fill every possible position before Trump took office again. Note: It is not clear how many of the 1.4 million had a one year probation vs a 2 year.

As the Chief Executive, Trump has the authority to terminate every new federal employee who is still in their probationary period. He can trim other federal workers to, but that often requires jumping through more hoops and delivering comprehensive plans to downsize agencies (which he will likely pursue as well).

Significance
There are only about 3 million federal agency employees... so perhaps 20% to 30% of total staff could be affected by this, and it could easily be north of $100B per year in savings.

Further Savings
It's impossible to estimate the total eventual savings realized by a slimmer more agile government, but there will be massive additional savings in the form of real estate, computers, and all manner of other operating costs (beyond just the payroll costs above).

And how do you put a price tag on 500,000 less *woke radicals doing everything they can to stop MAGA?

(*ok they won't all be woke radicals... but these are people the Biden admin wanted in office... err on the side of purging and then bring back who proves to be essential)
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