Will Trump & Elon cut >250,000 government employees in 2025?
1.4k
10kṀ1.9m
Dec 31
59%
chance
3

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.

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Kalshi page offline for anyone else?

@polymathematic it's working for me

bought Ṁ200 NO

@brod loading now. perhaps was a weird phone/caching issue.

@brianwang about 4k

@brianwang could, yes, and that’s more than twice the previous number, which was what they announced then.

bought Ṁ250 YES

FRED release is... delayed I guess? Was supposed to be released this morning but perhaps the shutdown affected that?

Federal employment data in FRED, from the BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, is based on payrolls for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. For September 2025, that pay period includes September 12, so layoffs at midnight on September 30 wouldn't affect it.

https://www.bls.gov/respondents/ces/faqs.htm#3

bought Ṁ50 NO

I've just heard they're starting to re-hire for people fired by DOGE, and potentially at greater numbers than the amount that were fired. Doesn't seem like the firings are keeping up pace with the hirings at this point.

@EliGaultney although there's also the talk about letting people go en-masse during the shutdown

@Mmmmm Yeah, furloughed employees wouldn't count, but using the shutdown as a pretext to actually fire furloughed people would. The question is, who would they fire during a furlough that they wouldn't fire otherwise?

manifolder?

@brod or maybe someone with inside info :)

bought Ṁ250 YES

@brod god this market is still so underpriced but I’ve sunk so much into it already

@bens wait. shutdown soon. bullish

@brod 😉

pretty incredible that we're 9 months into the year and have 8 data points and this is still just a coin flip.

@FergusArgyll I believe Polymarket is using Dec 2024 (3.012 million) minus Dec 2025, and Kalshi is using Jan 2025 (3.015 million) minus Jan 2026.

bought Ṁ3 NO

@travis ah so one month fewer to swing?

Idk how much sense that makes if we expect the numbers that push us above 200/250k to happen in November. IMO that hints at irrationality on the YES side of this trade

@travis That's not quite right, though. Neither this market nor the Kalshi one is going to wait until Jan 2026 data is available in order to resolve. Strictly 'before 2026'.

@BorisBartlog I guess you're right. So they really are far apart. You can buy over 200k on Polymarket for 53 cents and under 250k on Kalshi for 40 cents. I bought some of the under on Kalshi.

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