What a difference a change in president can make.

When Biden was president, the government workforce kept growing and growing.

Now, the federal workforce growth has slowed to a crawl.

The May employment report shows that for the first time since August 2023, government was not in the top two sectors for 12-month job growth. Federal government payrolls (excluding the postal service) have declined every month this year and in May were at the lowest level since November of 2023.

The Trump administration has wiped out a whole year’s worth of hiring by the federal government. Although those declines have been offset by hiring at the state and local level, total government payrolls at all levels in May were effectively unchanged since January (up 1,000 or less than 0.01%) when Trump took office.