The White House began a sweeping downsizing of its workforce on Friday as the government shutdown dragged into a second week.
“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought wrote on X, using an abbreviation for “reductions in force.”
An OMB official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Fox News Digital that the downsizing would be “substantial.” The White House referred questions to the OMB.
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The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET on Oct. 7, forcing agencies to send home workers in roles not considered essential.
Typically, furloughs are temporary; once Congress resolves the standoff, employees return to work and receive back pay.
However, this shutdown, stretching well into its second week, comes as the Trump administration warns that furloughs across the federal government could become permanent.
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What’s more, Washington, D.C., home to a high concentration of federal workers, has been hit especially hard after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory board called for layoffs earlier this year.
Those employees are stepping into a job market that has been losing momentum, with unemployment rising to about 4.3% in August, marking the highest figure since 2021.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday squarely blamed Democrats for the potential mass layoffs, repeating the administration’s stance on the ongoing shutdown.
“This conversation about layoffs would not be happening right now if the Democrats did not vote to shut the government down,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House.
On Sunday, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said that layoffs will start “if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere.”
He told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he’s hopeful “we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that.”
If Democrats are “reasonable once they get back into town on Monday,” Hassett added, then Trump will see “no reason for those layoffs.”
Government shutdowns have grown more frequent in recent decades as political brinkmanship has become a hallmark of budget negotiations.
Each week of a shutdown trims about 0.2% from U.S. economic growth, though that loss is typically recouped once federal workers return and agencies reopen.
Since 1976, the U.S. government has experienced 20 shutdowns.
The most recent one, the longest in U.S. history, occurred when a dispute over funding Trump’s border wall halted government operations for 34 days, spanning from December 2018 into January 2019.
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