One of the central pillars of the U.S. economy is melting down right in front of our eyes. We spend gigantic mountains of borrowed money to maintain the largest and most bloated bureaucracy in the entire history of the planet. More than 3 million workers are employed directly by the federal government, more than 7 million workers are employed by private institutions that rely on government funding or government contracts, and more than 20 million workers are employed by state and local governments. So that gives us a grand total of more than 30 million workers that are employed in bureaucratic jobs. Needless to say, on average bureaucratic jobs pay more and have better benefits than jobs in the private sector. So what is going to happen to our deeply troubled economy as large numbers of good paying bureaucratic jobs start to disappear?
Anyone that believed that shrinking the size of government would be painless was just being delusional.
Last week, over 10,000 federal workers were given the axe by the Trump administration. We are being told that this is “likely just the beginning of the job cuts”…
In a flurry of activity at the end of the week, the Trump administration fired more than 10,000 federal workers across multiple agencies as part of its “large-scale reductions” in the government workforce.
This is likely just the beginning of the job cuts, as President Donald Trump and top White House aide Elon Musk seek to continue slashing agency budgets.
Trump signed an executive order Tuesday seeking a significant reduction in the size of the government. It instructs heads of federal departments and agencies to make “large-scale reductions in force.”
No other president has ever dared to do such a thing.
Among those that were let go at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a senior litigation attorney named Hanna Hickman…
Hanna Hickman, a now-terminated worker for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told ABC News the last four days have been a roller coaster.
“It’s scary,” said Hickman, who was fired last Tuesday. “I had a real moment — I was at CVS the other day and … it kind of came on me all at once that I might not have health insurance in a few weeks, and that really hits you. I think it underscores the fact that we’re just regular, middle-class people, just like the people we’re trying to serve.”
Hickman was senior litigation counsel for the Division of Enforcement at the CFPB in Washington, D.C. She is one of thousands of mostly new employees known as probationary workers laid off this week across the federal government. Those recent hires had joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.
Of course it isn’t just workers in the D.C. area that are being terminated.
A 28-year-old woman named Victoria Porter says that she just lost her “dream job” which involved riding horses on mountain hiking trails in Montana…
Victoria Porter, 28, said she found her dream job riding horses into the backcountry to maintain hiking trails for the U.S. Forest Service in Montana. That all went away Friday, when she said eight other people on her 12-person trail team also were fired.
The terminations will have a big impact the community around the forest where she worked, Porter said. Outdoor outfitters and other local businesses rely on the trails as an economic engine for the region. There’s “no way” the trails can be maintained with a drastically smaller crew, she said.
Needless to say, a lot more job cuts are coming.
In fact, it is being reported that the IRS will soon “lay off thousands of probationary workers”…
The IRS is planning to lay off thousands of probationary workers during tax filing season, according to an Associated Press report citing sources familiar with the situation.
The report did not indicated exactly how many would be laid off.
The news of the layoffs comes after Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency reportedly began examining the IRS to find waste, fraud and tax dollar savings.
Things are beginning to get really, really crazy.
In D.C., new claims for unemployment benefits just jumped by 36 percent in a single week…
Since Trump has taken office, nearly 4,000 workers in the city have filed for unemployment insurance as part of a surge that began at the start of the new year, according to Labor Department figures not adjusted for seasonal factors.
In all, just shy of 7,000 claims have been filed in the six weeks of the new year, or about 55% more than in the prior six-week period. Filings rose to 1,780 for the week ending Feb. 8, a 36% increase from the prior week and more than four times around the same period in 2024.
We are still in the early stages of the government layoffs.
What will things look like once hundreds of thousands of additional government employees are unemployed?
Without jobs, many former bureaucrats will be forced to sell their homes.
According to the Daily Mail, the number of homes for sale in the D.C. area has nearly doubled within the past 30 days…
TKL found there are now nearly 8,000 homes listed for sale in the Washington, DC metro area, and almost half of them have been put on the market in the last 30 days.
There has also been a surge in new listings of homes over $1 million. According to TKL, there are 525 listings worth $1 million and 44 listings worth $5 million, suggesting DOGE layoffs could affect people in high-profile jobs.
If you are looking to purchase a home in the D.C. area, you now have a lot more choices.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what this is going to do to home values.
Home prices in the region have already been coming down substantially…
In November, the median home in the nation’s capital was worth $699,000, according to Redfin.
By February, the median home value dropped 20 percent, bringing the price down to $560,000.
Commercial real estate will be severely affected as well.
Elon Musk and his team are determined to get rid of office space that is not being utilized , and apparently the federal government currently has lots and lots of office space that is not being occupied.
What a mess.
Interestingly, it appears that a tremendous amount of money is on the move as well.
In the D.C. area, searches for “Swiss bank”, “offshore bank”, “wire money” and “IBAN” have all skyrocketed.
Now that the gravy train has come to a screeching halt, rats are scurrying for cover while they still can.
And let us not forget that we are about one month away from a potential government shutdown which could take the madness in D.C. to an entirely new level…
What almost everyone is missing: This country has roughly one month until the government runs out of money, and things like paychecks to troops, food-inspection programs, disaster-relief payments, and aid to low-income families could all be caught up in a chaotic game of chicken.
I was in favor of radically reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy long before it was fashionable.
And many of the changes that are happening right now are desperately needed.
But let there be no doubt – the process that has begun is going to result in severe pain.
Honestly, I do not know if our society is equipped to handle what is about to happen.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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