Posts tagged essential employees
The Federal Workforce Will Be a Little Smaller After the Government Shutdown Ends
October 16, 2025 // While further reductions in the size of the federal workforce are certainly welcome, the layoffs will have to become significantly more aggressive to more than scratch the federal Leviathan. While smaller than its peak at 3.4 million workers in 1990 and then again in 2010, the federal government still employed 2.9 million people, not counting military personnel, as of August 2025. That's almost 3 million people living off the taxes collected by the federal government (or, increasingly, the money it borrows) rather than productively creating goods and services for willing consumers. And those nearly 3 million people aren't all just sitting around. Too many of them get up to mischief by exercising the power of the government to interfere in people's lives and to enforce intrusive rules and laws. Just see my comment above about the public health establishment and the pandemic. Fewer federal employees mean not so many mischief-makers to cause trouble, along with some cost savings.
Hundreds Of Unpaid TSA Agents Are Calling In Sick—Expect Longer Airport Security Lines
October 7, 2025 // A notice on the MyTSA app, which travelers use to monitor TSA wait times at airports, says it is “not being actively managed” due to the lapse in funding. There is a similar notice on the TSA website. Shuker told Forbes he would expect a higher number of TSA employees to call out sick on busier travel days such as Sunday, Thursday and Monday. “If you were planning like stress day or a mental health day or an ‘F you’ day, you wouldn’t pick Tuesday because it's the lightest day of the week and the easiest to work,” Shuker told Forbes.