Many posts have discussed federal employment and bureaucracy.
From the Partnership for Public Service:In 2025, the Trump administration took direct aim at our nation’s professional civil servants through numerous legally contested workforce reductions, haphazard agency restructuring efforts, the unilateral cancellation of government funding without approval from Congress and the weaponization of some federal agencies. This assault on federal civil servants and our national government has resulted in a demoralized and less engaged workforce that has made our country less safe, unhealthier and less prosperous. And when employee engagement suffers, as it has during this past year, our government’s ability to provide essential services to the public declines.
Last August, the Office of Personnel Management canceled the administration of its annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, an instrument that has measured organizational performance across four administrations, including the first term of President Donald Trump, and fulfilled a legal requirement that agencies survey their workforces and make the data public. Consequently, government leaders have been lacking an essential tool that ensures they are effectively managing their workforce to meet the needs of the public.
As a result of this decision, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service administered its proprietary Public Service Viewpoint Survey to capture the impact of the administration’s actions on government performance and to continue our tradition of holding leaders accountable for improving their workplaces through programming like the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government®.
Unfortunately, the data is clear: The Trump administration has received a failing grade on its management of our government from those who serve our country—the federal workforce.
Our survey data and accompanying anonymous focus groups with federal employees provide stories and experiences of a workforce that has been systemically harassed as well as impeded from providing essential services to the public during the first year of the second Trump administration.
While the results of this survey are not directly comparable with the Office of Personnel Management’s annual FEVS, it contains similar questions and presents the best data source available about the state of federal employee engagement and the impact that it has on essential services for the public. The survey results represent the perspectives of 11,083 employees from across government. To ensure the results are valid and as representative as possible of the opinions of the workforce, we modeled our eligibility requirements and approach to response weighting based on the methodology of the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.
