As Donald Trump celebrated his presidential victory, the Office of Personnel Management counted more than 2.3 million federal employees around the country for the year 2024. More than 80% of them worked outside the nation's capital, including communities in metro Kansas City and across Missouri and Kansas.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump said the federal workforce was too big, leading to inefficiency and corruption. He vowed to shrink the numbers, starting on Day One of his presidency. The task of reshaping the federal government fell largely to the Department of Government Efficiency.
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Office of Personnel Management shows Trump delivered on his promise to shrink the size of the federal government, with 10% reduction nationwide.
When DOGE got to work on Jan. 20, 2025 – Inauguration Day – Missouri's federal workforce amounted to 29,925 and Kansas' numbered 11,287. Between Day One of the Trump administration and November 2025, the DOGE cuts reduced Missouri's federal workforce by 13% and Kansas' by 15%. Data from the Bureau of Labor shows the Kansas City metro lost about 2,800 federal jobs, or about 10% of the area's federal workforce.
Missouri and Kansas are home to some of the departments most affected by the reductions: Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department and the Department of Defense. The Kansas City metro has major regional offices of the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration. It ranks eighth in the country for the proportion of the workforce employed by the federal government, according to The Mid-America Regional Council, a nonprofit association of city and county governments and the metropolitan planning organization for the region.
Frank Lenk, MARC's economic research director, has been considering the impact of the federal government push to reduce its workforce since it began in early 2025.
"You can't grow by picking in each other's laundry, as is often said. You've got to grow by serving a larger economy," Lenk said. "With federal employment, that money is coming from around the country to be spent on workers here. We're performing national functions. And so, the federal workforce ends up having sort of an outsized impact on the scale of like a headquarters for a major telecommunications firm."
With the loss of 2,800 mostly well-paying jobs, Lenk said, will come ripple effects for other Kansas Citians. For one thing, losing the buying power of so many people will mean a loss of about $900 million in the economy over the course of one year. And, he said, for every federal job that's gone, about one-and-a-half jobs could be lost from other economic sectors.
"When that income leaves the region, then there's not as much spending on groceries and entertainment," Lenk said. "There's not as much spending on other services like health care and financial services. And so the entire economy suffers a loss."
Ripple effects
Devin O'Connor, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the Trump administration carried out the largest one-year reduction in the federal workforce in over 75 years.
"You'd have to go back to the demobilization that followed World War II to see a faster reduction of federal workers of this scale," he said.
Among the workers caught up in reduction were those at the Kansas City IRS office. In July 2025, Shannon Ellis, head of the union that represents Kansas City IRS employees, told KCUR's Kansas City Today the layoffs were demoralizing and would delay critical services.
"You'll have extremely long waits on the phones," Ellis said. "Delays in processing returns will be ridiculous. Your refunds will be delayed."
DOGE directed federal agencies to offer employees something called the deferred resignation program. It was essentially a choice between resigning on a specific date, or being subject to future layoffs.
"Here behind door number one, you can do this, or you can wait to see what happens behind door number two," Ellis told Kansas City Today. "It's like a psychological war."
O'Connor said DOGE achieved its historic shrinking of the federal workforce through a combination of "pressure campaigns, broadly offering financial incentives to encourage those workers to leave, and mass firings often targeted at the federal workers who were most recently hired."
OPM did not respond to interview requests for this article, but in a Nov. 21, 2025, post on the OPM website, Director Scott Kupor said the federal efforts exceeded the Trump administration's goals. He said relatively few losses were due to reductions in force – the government's term for layoffs – and firings of probationary employees. Out of all employees who left their jobs in the last year, "over 92% did so voluntarily," he said – mostly through the deferred resignation program.
The president's 2026 budget, released in May, proposed another 140,000 cuts to the federal workforce. The OPM data released in January shows the administration again surpassed its goals. According to O'Connor, it effectively implemented most of those cuts before the fiscal year started or Congress finalized the appropriations bills that fund federal personnel.
"So when Congress provides the funding for these programs, and the administration doesn't have the capacity to carry them out successfully to the way that Congress would expect, well, that's going to create a little bit of an upset or a disconnect," O'Connor said.
Impact on people
Chandler McGinnis is a Kansas City-based Social Security Administration employee who answers the customer contact number, speaking to callers about their disability benefits, Social Security checks and other matters.
"Claims that should take 30 to 60 days are now taking seven months, sometimes 11 months." she told a KCUR reporter in November 2025. People asked her, "Am I going to die before you ever decide on my claim?"
"I'm not the person that decides on their claim," McGinnis said. "But having to have that conversation with them is difficult because I don't have an answer."
O'Connor said the impact of shrinking the federal workforce by more than 10% hasn't been felt by most Americans yet.
"When you sort of run through some of the things the federal government does, and you look at where some of these cuts have fallen, you can start to get a sense for why this could be a real challenge for a long time to come," he said.
O'Connor said he worries about the cuts to crucial positions and expertise without an apparent plan to address needs.
"People may not know that this radical reshaping of the federal workforce is driving these challenges or these problems they have when they go to the federal government for help or information," he said.
As an example, O'Connor pointed to the 22% cut to the USDA's Farm Service Agency workforce reported by OPM.
"I think farmers will recognize when the Farm Service Agency that's going to have consequences for their ability to get the services. To have farm loans processed. To get commodity programs executed," he said.
Ellis, the IRS employee union leader, told KCUR: "Americans don't realize that they use programs. But they'll be gone or they'll be delayed. Funds won't be there. Because we don't have enough people to do the job."
METHODOLOGY
Daniel Wheaton reviewed and analyzed data from the Office of Personnel Management covering the period between January and November 2025. Holly Edgell researched President Trump's campaign promises and reviewed how they are playing out today. She interviewed Devin O'Connor of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan institute that studies federal and state policies. She also interviewed Frank Lenk, economic research director for The Mid-America Regional Council, a nonprofit association of city and county governments and the metropolitan planning organization for the region. This story incorporates quotes and information from previous reporting by KCUR's Nomin Ujiyediin.
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
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REFERENCES
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Federal Workforce Size and Composition (Office of Personnel Management | Jan. 8, 2026)
How staffing cuts in 2025 transformed the federal workforce (Federal News Network | Jan. 1, 2026)
This Kansas City worker helped Social Security callers through the shutdown: 'It starts to break me' (KCUR | Nov. 20, 2025)
Federal Workforce Layoff Impacts (Mid-America Regional Council | Aug. 25, 2025)
'A psychological war': IRS workers in Kansas City say Trump layoffs are illegal and inefficient (KCUR | July 11, 2925)
Sweeping Federal Worker Layoffs Leave States Reeling (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | April 1, 2025)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
News – Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Copyright 2026 KCUR
