This market resolves YES if the number of federal employees decreases by more than 500,000 relative to the January 2025 count, as measured by the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) series CES9091000001 before January 2026.
As of February 2025, there were approximately 3,007,000 federal employees. A reduction of 500,000 would represent about 16.6% of the total federal workforce.
Resolution will be based on the official FRED data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001
This market aligns with the Kalshi market: https://kalshi.com/markets/kxfedemployees/federal-government-employee-count
1,000Kalshi is currently betting 343K of staff reductions. Which is around the sum of the fired, buyouts and announced cuts. But does not include potentially deeper cuts of probationary staff or the targeted workforce.
26% for cutting 500k. But this is only 45 days in and there are nearly 300 days left.
Kalshi - the 250k or over cuts is at 64% and will go to 87% like the more than 100k is now. When the 343k estimate goes to 510k. The 500k or over at 26% will likely go to 69% when the estimate of cuts is at 610k.
About 30,000 federal employees have been laid off or fired, with a significant portion being probationary staff. 77,000 employees have accepted buyouts.
RIF Plan Implementation: Agencies are required to submit RIF plans by March 13, 2025, with implementation likely to follow shortly after, accelerating layoffs throughout the year.
Targeted Workforce: The administration has suggested focusing on employees in roles not required by law and those typically furloughed during shutdowns—about one-third of the federal workforce, or roughly 700,000 employees.
Attrition-Based Hiring: Agencies are limited to hiring one employee for every four who leave, which will naturally shrink the workforce over time.
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.
IRS, GSA are making deep cuts.
In February 2025, the IRS laid off 7,000 probationary employees as part of efforts to reduce the federal workforce. The IRS is preparing to reduce its workforce by as much as 50%, potentially dropping from approximately 90,000 employees to 45,000. This reduction would be achieved through a mix of layoffs, attrition, and incentivized buyouts, aligning with broader federal cost-cutting initiatives.
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/
SSA plans to reduce its workforce to 50,000 employees through retirements, Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP), and RIF actions. The agency will restructure from 10 regional offices to 4 and reduce headquarters to seven Deputy Commissioner-level organizations.
https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/#3-2025-1
VSIP SSA to reduce staff by up to 7,000 employees (if enough opt in) in a short timeframe.
Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP):
Deadline to Opt In: Employees must decide to accept VSIP by March 14, 2025, at noon EST.
Separation Date: Employees who opt in must separate from the agency no later than April 19, 2025.
Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) / Retirements:
Availability Period: Early retirements are available from March 1, 2025, through December 31, 2025.
RIF : 10k-20k probably, 1-3 months.
The DoD intends to reduce its civilian workforce by 5% to 8%, potentially affecting between 38,000 and 61,000 employees. Notices expected soon as the DoD works toward the March 13 deadline.
Department of Education, FEMA, and the EPA, made announcements on February 26, 2025.
Lutnick - USPS workers will also replace 20,000 Social Security workers. "We spend $40 billion every 10 years doing the census. And that means we hire 625,000 people. And they go, and they rent cars and gas, and you pay them food... They go to every household and count the people." "What department do we already have that already employs 625,000 people? It's got cars, already has gas, and goes to every household. [Answer: USPS]." "They can go to your house when you have a baby and give you the form for Social Security. And the 20,000 Social Security officers that we have, we just don't need them. We actually can do real customer service."
Announcement by Trump that Lee
Zeldin plans to cut 65% of EPA. This would be 10k of 15k staff.