Thousands of federal workers will have their jobs reclassified, paving the way for more mass layoffs.
According to President Trump, career government employees will be classified as “schedule policy/career” employees.
The reclassification, which puts into effect an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office, will effectively make thousands of federal workers “employees at will.”
Experts who spoke to Reuters said the move could put “hundreds of thousands” of federal jobs at risk.
Towards the end of his first term, President Trump reclassified large swathes of government workers as a prelude to mass layoffs of around 50,000 employees. Schedule F, as it was known, was rescinded by President Biden on his inauguration day.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have already taken voluntary buyouts as part of a broad move by the Trump administration to reduce bloat and inefficiency in the federal government.
A key player in the dramatic cuts to government spending is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk.
According to the latest figures on its website, DOGE has now saved taxpayers $150 billion.
DOGE updated its website last week to reflect the most accurate figures available, posting an extra $10 billion in savings from the previous update.
The Department’s savings of $150 billion equate to $931.68 per taxpayer in the US.
According to the website, the savings are a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
The latest batch of receipts posted on the website shows over 7,000 terminated contracts, including individual contracts amounting to billions of dollars. One cancelled contract, for refugee resettlement, amounted to $2,902,177,562.
Of all the departments of the US government, Health and Human Services has so far generated the greatest cost-savings, followed by the Department of Education and the General Services Administration.
The Department of Commerce, Department of Justice and Department of Veterans Affairs are among the departments generating the least savings.
DOGE also recently discovered that children and people who are clearly dead have been claiming hundreds of millions in unemployment benefit.
A survey of unemployment claims revealed that nearly 25,000 people aged over 115 claimed a total of $59 million in benefits, and 28,000 people aged between 1 and 5 claimed $254 million in benefits.
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