By Matt Rooney
The federal government has grown – and grown – with few exceptions this century. Donald Trump is making history by reversing course.
Bush’s War on Terror ballooned the public security sector. Presidents Obama and Biden oversaw program-driven increases in the government sector.
During his first year of his second term, President Trump actually oversaw a 10% drop in the size of the federal workforce. There are approximately one-quarter of a million fewer federal workers today than there were on January 20, 2025.
Year One under Trump:
Federal workforce down 10%.
The biggest shrink in decades. The swamp is finally receding! pic.twitter.com/aRKd1yGb3g
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) March 17, 2026
There were about 46,000 federal civilian jobs in New Jersey at the end of 2025, representing a decline from approximately 1.9% of the state workforce in 2010 to around 1% today.
Unsurprisingly, more than one-third of those New Jersey federal employees are in the defense sector with Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst serving as one the state’s largest employers.
