唐纳德·特朗普总统第二个任期内最不被关注的一项政策成功，便是清除了大量不必要的联邦工作岗位。
One of the most unheralded policy successes of President Donald Trump’s second term has been the purging of many unnecessary federal jobs.
自2025年1月20日以来，联邦政府已削减了30万个岗位，使其雇员总数降至仍显臃肿的270万人。
The federal government has reduced its workforce by 300,000 jobs since Jan. 20, 2025, bringing it down to a still-bulky 2.7 million employees.
自林登·约翰逊总统的“伟大社会”计划大幅扩大国家政府职能以来，联邦政府的工作人员规模从未达到如此低的水平。
Not since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society vastly expanded the scope of the national government has the federal workforce been at this level.
问题并不仅仅在于联邦政府裁减了冗余岗位——毕竟，目前仍有超过400万名合同工。关键在于，白宫精准地针对了所有正确的机构。
It’s not merely that the feds have shed superfluous jobs — there are still over 4 million contract workers, after all. It’s that the White House has been targeting all the right institutions.
臃肿的战争部裁员超过6.1万人，同样臃肿的国务院则有37%的员工离职，这两个部门经历了最大幅度的削减。但大多数买断离职计划都针对那些本应早已关闭的机构和部门。
The bloated War Department, with over 61,000 departures, and the equally bloated State Department, with 37% of its staff gone, experienced the biggest reductions. But most of the buyouts were aimed at agencies and departments that should have been shuttered a long time ago.
以美国国际开发署为例，多年来，该机构一直被用来向全球各地的极左意识形态项目输送数十亿美元资金：如今，其几乎所有员工都已离岗。
Take the US Agency for International Development, which for years was used to funnel billions to hard-left ideological projects around the world: Virtually its entire staff is gone.
消费者金融保护局是进步派参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦（马萨诸塞州民主党）创造的一个缺乏问责制的官僚机构，目前已有约88%的员工离职，尽管其规模仍然过大。
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the unaccountable bureaucratic brainchild of progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has lost roughly 88% of its workers, though it’s still far too big.
农业部尽管名字如此，但实际上主要是一个福利机构，与农业本身关系不大，该部门也经历了数万名员工的离职。
The Agriculture Department, which despite its name is principally a welfare agency that has little to do with farming, experienced tens of thousands of departures.
另一个福利国家机构——住房和城市发展部同样如此，其最显著的“成就”就是推高了房价。不过，并非所有机构的裁员速度都足够快。
So has another welfare-state institution, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose most notable achievement has been helping inflate housing prices. Not every agency is being clipped fast enough, though.
特朗普在任期初期签署了一项行政命令，要求撤销教育部——然而这个越权干预的机构，其职责不过是扶持工会、破坏地方自主举措，目前仅失去了40%的员工。
Early in his term, Trump signed an executive order directing the dismantling of the Education Department — yet this intrusive agency, which spends its time propping up unions and undermining local initiatives, has lost only 40% of its staff.
每当共和党人威胁要削减联邦政府岗位时——尽管他们很少真正付诸行动——民主党人都会预测社会将陷入混乱，失业率也将飙升。2024年9月的失业率为4.1%。2025年9月，这一比例为4.4%。而目前则为4.2%。
Every time Republicans threaten to cut federal jobs, though they rarely follow through, Democrats predict that society will be plunged into chaos and high unemployment. The unemployment rate in September 2024 was 4.1%. In September 2025, it was 4.4%. It’s at 4.2% today.
可以推测，几乎没有人注意到联邦政府的工作人员数量已经减少了大约11%。即使再减少11%，他们可能也察觉不到。民主党人真正害怕的是失去权力。
Barely anyone, one suspects, has noticed that the federal workforce has shrunk by around 11%. They probably wouldn’t notice if it shrank by another 11%. What Democrats really fear is losing power.
联邦机构、政府雇员和公共部门工会，都是左翼政治影响力的重要基础。
Federal agencies, government employees and public-sector unions are all bases of political influence for the left.
“这是一种恐吓手段，”参议院少数党领袖查克·舒默（纽约州民主党）在管理与预算办公室发布一份备忘录，要求各机构为大规模裁员做准备时抱怨道。“唐纳德·特朗普从第一天起就在解雇联邦雇员——不是为了治理国家，而是为了制造恐惧。”为什么民主党人会“害怕”一个规模更小的联邦政府呢？我们不知道政府雇员如何投票，但可以做出一个合理的推测。
“This is an attempt at intimidation,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) complained when the Office of Management and Budget released a memo instructing agencies to plan for large-scale layoffs. “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since Day 1 — not to govern, but to scare.”Why would Democrats be “scared” of a leaner federal workforce? We don’t know how government employees vote, but we can make an educated guess.
2024年，联邦雇员捐赠的竞选资金中约有84%流向了民主党总统候选人卡玛拉·哈里斯。拜登政府执政期间，联邦文职岗位增加了超过13万个。
Around 84% of campaign donations from federal workers went to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024. Federal civilian jobs rose by over 130,000 under the Biden administration.
在拜登任期内新增的约1600万个美国就业岗位中，大约有11%属于联邦、州和地方政府的岗位。
Around 11% of the approximately 16 million US jobs added during Biden’s term were federal, state and local government jobs.
目前，美国劳动力总量中约有15%，即大约2400万人，仍在各级政府工作。
Roughly 15% of the total US workforce, around 24 million people, still works for the government at all levels.
在缩减联邦政府规模方面，还有更多工作可以做，同时还需要进一步实现去中心化和分散布局。
There is more that can be done, not only in trimming the federal workforce but also in decentralizing and dispersing it.
特朗普曾承诺将更多联邦政府岗位迁出华盛顿地区——那些在弗吉尼亚州和马里兰州围绕首都盘踞的政治精英们，一直在投票支持赋予自身更多权力。这些岗位应尽可能分散布局。
Trump promised to relocate more federal jobs out of the Washington area — the political class entrenched around the capital in Virginia and Maryland keeps voting to empower itself. It should be dispersed as much as possible.
2001年，反税活动家格罗弗·诺奎斯特曾宣称自己的目标是缩减联邦政府的规模，直到政府小到可以“把它拖进浴室，然后淹死在浴缸里”。然而多年来的事实证明：无论是哪个政党，都没有制定任何削减开支的计划；选民们似乎也不要求政府这么做。
In 2001, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist famously proclaimed that his goal was to shrink the federal government until it was small enough to “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”We’ve learned over the years that it doesn’t work that way: Neither party has any plan to curb spending, and voters don’t seem to be clamoring for one.
虽然缩减联邦政府的官僚机构及员工规模无法有效遏制巨额的财政赤字以及那些威胁我们经济的债务问题，但即便这种缩减只是暂时的（直到民主党重新掌权），对纳税人来说仍然是一种“胜利”。
Shrinking the federal bureaucracy and workforce isn’t going to restrain massive deficit spending and our economy-threatening, turbocharged debt. Still, paring down the size, scope and intrusiveness of a swollen federal government, even if it’s just temporary until Democrats come back into power, is a win for taxpayers.