Liberty Vittert, a professor of data science at Washington University in St. Louis and the on-air statistician for the NewsNation network, makes a key point:

The most frustrating argument I have heard against DOGE’s cuts is that government workers are losing their jobs. Of course, I feel for anyone who loses a job — it is a scary moment for anyone, causing huge upset for themselves and their families. But this isn’t new. Under President Obama, multiple regulations led to tens of thousands of job losses — people with no other training and who had been coal miners or worked in factories their entire lives lost their jobs with just a few days’ notice. Entire communities were devastated by Obama and Biden-era policies, and in some cases they were quite proud of it.

Some federal employees are particularly prolific destroyers of private sector jobs, with one study finding that cutting the budgets and staffing of federal regulatory agencies by 10% would result in the creation of over 3 million private-sector jobs.