March 7, 2025
Federal workers’ salaries represent less than 5% of federal spending and 1% of GDP
Government layoffs are at their highest level since 2020 and not only do these salaries consist of a tiny fraction of the government budget, many of the laid off workers make our economy and financial system run efficiently. Matthew Shapiro told Marketplace:
When there’s a bank failure, we have federal employees who — as we saw a few years ago with the Silicon Valley Bank — will close it on a Friday and make sure it’s open Monday morning so that depositors can be paid.
There’s a huge amount of federal services delivered by a very small and quite effective federal workforce.