Musk, Ramaswamy want federal workers in the office full time. There’s a hitch.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The nation’s largest workforce could soon be ordered back to the office full-time. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to slash government bureaucracy and appointed uber-wealthy entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the efficiency effort.
The two men have already targeted remote workers, saying that requiring federal employees back to the office five days a week would result in a welcome wave of voluntary terminations. “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Wednesday. Ending remote work is being considered a potential early action item for the new administration shortly after the Jan.
20 inauguration, said a person working closely with the effort. Still, that outcome is far from certain. Of the 2.3 million civilian federal workers—nearly 30% of whom are veterans—more than half already work in-person because of the nature of their jobs, such as food-safety inspectors and healthcare workers, according to a 2024 Office of Management and Budget report.
The rest, who are eligible to work remotely some of the time, perform an average 61% of their hours in the workplace. In U.S. Census Bureau surveys, federal and private-sector employees work roughly the same amount of time in person versus remotely.
The newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency, the advisory group Musk and Ramaswamy have been appointed to lead, doesn’t necessarily have direct power to issue such a mandate. Federal worker union leaders said changes to working conditions should be negotiated in collective bargaining. Unions are gearing up
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