Linked to this Kalshi question:
If there are more than 250000 federal employees no longer working relative to the January 2025 employee count before Jan 2026, then the market resolves to Yes. Outcome verified from FRED.
Note the resolution criteria—what matters is the change in the count of federal employees, not whether we can confirm Trump and/or Elon directly fired them. For reference, the specific chart Kalshi links to appears to be this one.
1,000@jb456 people can bet on the data as they’d like but keep in mind that tbe survey period doesn’t cover much of the major recent DOGE layoffs. So the Feb data can only tell us a limited amount
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-doge-civilian-job-cuts-fbcb154fbe9d5904f456aa3655e57c44
Roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the Defense Department, but fewer than 21,000 workers who took a voluntary resignation plan are leaving in the coming months, a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday.
To reach the goal of a 5% to 8% cut in a civilian workforce of more than 900,000, the official said the department aims to slash about 6,000 positions a month by simply not replacing workers who routinely leave.
This alone is a pretty big chunk of what’s needed
Collective bargaining agreement for TSA ended by DHS. Up to thousands to 10K of the 50K TSOs if DHS eliminates positions held by per performing union workers or restructures TSA.
@brianwang these updates are getting a bit spammy. would you mind either (a) limiting the updates to ~twice per month, or (b) creating a thread & posting subsequent updates as replies?
@Ziddletwix You are 6th largest No buyer in this market. I think you have bias but I could be wrong. Can you show me the official manifold rule about the number of comments? Also, you made over four posts per day in the last days on this question. Others have daily comments and they have less on topic info. So it seems like four times in one day is ok, There happens to be a lot of valid information and news on this particular question. Various agencies announcing massive reductions in staffing levels. Thousands and multiple in the 50000-100000 range. March 13-31 there will dozens of agencies announcing staffing reduction and reduction plans. I am willing to comply with official policy enforced for all commenters.
@Ziddletwix producing noise is literally his business (nextbigfuture.com, the best part is what you will read under "About"). I've encountered him on a different platform, he can't be stopped.
@brianwang Market creators have wide leeway to run their comment sections as they would like when it comes to hiding low quality contributions. If you disagree you can read the community guidelines or ask another mod (or you can believe me). Your posts have become spammy and are not adding to the discussion (and others have complained about this as well). I can clean up the comment section by hiding low quality contributions (or by blocking users who continue to do this after a gentle request to stop but I'd rather not do that). But it would very easy to follow either suggestion? Just gather these repetitive updates in a thread or hold them for actual contributions.
And yes, if anyone else posts dozens of top level comments that are simple quotes of headlines, I will happily request the same thing of them. If I have missed anyone who is doing this, please LMK. News updates are fine, and they would make an excellent thread! There is no need for a separate top level comment each time.
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Also, you made over four posts per day in the last days on this question.
(It wouldn't matter either way but I dunno what's the point in making stuff up lol, in recent days I've only replied to other comments which is exactly what I'm requesting that you do!)
(also, really not the point here, but I don't even know what the implication would be about bias. why would the position i hold make me care about the direction of info people post? if anything, as a NO holder, wouldn't the intuition be more likely the opposite, i want people to post lots of pro-YES content so i can get cheaper NO shares? my only recent comment about the market itself was a pro-YES comment explaining why the feb jobs report doesn't mean the probability should decrease. i do not care whether people share YES or NO content it won't change the outcome)
@Ziddletwix Fine
Federal government employment decreases by >500,000 before January 2026
https://manifold.markets/brianwang/federal-government-employment-decre
@Ziddletwix sorry about the several links I posted in a row. I merged some of them under a single thread. Feel free to hide any of the comments.
@brianwang 10,000 to be cut at HHS. Out of 72000
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/rfk-jr-job-cuts-health-human-services-bdec28b0
@brianwang Senator MIKE LEE has introduced new legislation to abolish the TSA (61000 staff in the TSA). the functions would be privatized. 50,000 TSA in airports.
https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/03/27/mike-lee-abolish-tsa/
@jb456 people can bet on the data as they’d like but keep in mind that tbe survey period doesn’t cover much of the major recent DOGE layoffs. So the Feb data can only tell us a limited amount
@Ziddletwix Good point. It looks like the reference timing for the CES establishment survey is the pay period containing the 12th of the month, so the data point is something like a snapshot of Feb 12th, it won't reflect reductions that have happened in the last three weeks. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm
@jb456 @Ziddletwix moreover, everyone who is taking the buyout likely won't show up in the data until October, correct?
@bens AFAIK, yes. this is the article I saw yesterday (so before the numbers were released): https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/economy/us-jobs-report-february-preview/index.html
That’s partly because of timing: The bulk of the layoffs didn’t occur until after the survey period (which is the week of the 12th). And those that did might not show up anyway: They’re counted as employed if they received pay for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th day of the month.
Also, some federal workers are serving out a paid notice period where they essentially quit but won’t be unemployed weeks or even months from now.
It’s more likely, economists have told CNN, that federal cuts will be more visible in the March and April jobs reports.
Lots of the layoffs involve a paid notice period & they won't show up yet. The article isn't as specific on the "fork in the road" buyout—the language makes it sound like if they were actually still being paid until september, those layoffs wouldn't show up until after then. But I think there's a lot of uncertainty about how the voluntary buyouts will actually work
Department of Veterans Affairs announced plans Wednesday to cut roughly 80,000 jobs, more than 15 percent of its employees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/05/veterans-affairs-cut-employees-trump-doge/
@brianwang uSPS 10,000 early retirement over next 30 days. Various contracts modified to save billlions
@DavidHiggs yeah the comments sections on popular politics markets are unfortunately basically all not worthwhile
@Ziddletwix @DavidHiggs People that lean right (myself included) tend to become smug/annoying on manifold.
It's very easy to earn mana by exploiting manifold's liberal bias and that can give people a distorted view of their actual prediction skill/intelligence.
It's very easy to earn mana by exploiting manifold's liberal bias and that can give people a distorted view of their actual prediction skill/intelligence.
Given the political leanings of the top traders on the site I don’t think this theory seems particularly predictive tbh.
And I don’t think there’s much to explain. Political discussions online left unchecked tend to be very low quality.
@Ziddletwix Are a lot of top traders known to be rightwing? Like 'voted for trump' rightwing not 'lower taxes' rightwing. I can only think of 2.
@DavidHiggs the comments section doesn’t strike me as particularly bad… it’s mostly Brian sharing unsourced numbers, others posting links or analysis. I’ve seen a lot worse!
@Shai no i mean the opposite—to the extent that i am aware of the political leanings of the top manifold traders, they are consistently left of center (on the "normie lib" to "scott alexander/grey tribe" affiliation).
if the dynamics here were best explained by it being such an ez cheat code to bet against manifold's liberal bias, then that result would be strange. it's particularly striking since the manifold leaderboard is largely based on a specific period where it has been consistently profitable to just blindly bet on right wing electoral success. (to find a political cycle where that wouldn't have been true, you'd have to look all the way back to... 2022. or 2020. or 2018). and yet still, despite "just bet on the right lmao" being the obviously correct strategy given hindsight during this period, right wing beliefs are not particularly well represented at the top of the leaderboard. thus, i don't think the original theory (if you hold right wing beliefs it's particularly easy to exploit manifold's liberal bias & earn ez mana), is all that useful/predictive here.
@NicoDelon and yes i don't see much difference between this comment section and those of the popular markets during the election itself
@Ziddletwix Most people on this website are left of center, not just the top traders.
Exploiting this doesn't mean betting the right will succeed at everything. It means spotting when people's political beliefs are clouding their judgment. For example causing them to bet that Andrew Tate was likely to meet with Trump this week.
Precisely because most of the best traders here are left of center the few that aren't are constantly finding bags of mana on the ground. This has especially been the case since the election, with many politically charged markets popping up.
Imagine how you'd feel if on a daily basis you'd stumble into uncalibrated markets about top athletes dying from vaccine side effects or Bernie Sanders coming out in support of the NAMBLA.
That's how manifold has felt for me since Trump won.
@DavidHiggs This is the best the comment section will ever be. Either Manifold will die, or more people will take an interest in it -- including the barely literate, the propagandists, the bots, and the trolls.
@aashiq I don't agree with that. It's also possible that
1) Manifold will find better ways of moderating comment sections
2) the bots will start to make higher quality content: really interesting and useful comments
3) Manifold becomes a Schelling point for mature and interesting commenters
@Shai I'm not sure if it directly relates here, but I do think its interesting and should probably be more well known that ~100% of the best real money prediction market traders are centrists or libs despite the last election being very good for Republicans
It means spotting when people's political beliefs are clouding their judgment. For example causing them to bet that Andrew Tate was likely to meet with Trump this week.
I would argue it's the opposite, it's rightwing to bet yes on that
@Shai I imagine they'd be excited about their two favourite people in the same room, probably high fiving each other over the pussies they've grabbed. Why do you think this would be a left wing fantasy ?
@Odoacre I think the left wing fantasy here is that Andrew Tate is a 'favorite person' for right wingers.
@Odoacre of course not lol. I'm saying that more conservatives dislike him than like him, and that meeting with him would be massively against Trump's interest.
@bens companies with dramatically more resources tend to have worse comment sections than manifold. I don’t think Manifold becoming SOTA at moderation is likely.
The quality of the bots posting content will improve! But I’m not sure if that necessarily constitutes an improvement. Many want a comment section where they can talk with other humans.
Manifold may become such a schelling point, but it would be the first of its kind. Eternal September is the path of least resistance, and I don’t know of any comments section that is both widely read and high quality. Many blogs have high quality content, but their monetization does not depend on growing user counts as much as Manifold.
@Shai its so funny this was your reply to ziddle's comment lmao. like astonishingly funny lol. one of the funniest comments ive read on this site
@aashiq Manifold pivoting away from real-money betting might also improve comment section (in fact, it seems like it already has to some extent)