President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order mandating that federal workers return to their offices full time, a core element of his focus on overhauling the government workforce.
For years, Republicans have sought to weaken certain long-existing protections for federal workers, with many conservatives zeroing in on reclassifying scores of career civil servants.
"Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary," the order read.
Trump has been especially insistent on a return-to-office push, with his position threatening the remote and hybrid arrangements that many federal workers have enjoyed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Elon Musk, who was named to lead Trump's cost-cutting advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency, previously said such a move might encourage some workers to quit rather than return to work in the office full time.
"Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," Musk said in a November op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal. The article was cowritten with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is leaving DOGE and is expected to run for governor of Ohio.
While many federal employees can telework, an August report from the Office of Management and Budget found that about 10% of the roughly 2.3 million civilian workers in two dozen major agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Social Security Administration, "were in remote positions where there was no expectation that they worked in-person on any regular or recurring basis."
The report, based on average data representing pay periods that ended May 4 and May 18, identified more than 60,000 fully remote workers in the Department of Defense, about 37,000 in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and nearly 27,000 in the Department of Health and Human Services.
The budget office also found that just under half of the civilian workers employed in the two dozen agencies were eligible for at least some telework.
The Defense Department had the most fully remote employees of the agencies examined by the budget office, though those workers accounted for only about 8% of its workforce. The Department of Education had the highest share of people working fully remotely, at 55%.
"Among the subset of federal workers that are telework-eligible, excluding remote workers, 61.2% of regular, working hours were spent in-person," the OMB report said. That figure for the Department of Agriculture was 81%, and it was about 80% for the State Department.
Shortly before the inauguration, when asked about the prospect of return-to-office mandates and jobs being moved out of Washington, Trump's transition team pointed to Trump's comments at a December 16 press conference that if people don't return to the office, "they're going to be dismissed."
On Monday, Trump also issued an executive order that put a freeze on federal hiring.
"As part of this freeze, no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law," the order read.
That executive order does not apply to military personnel, immigration enforcement positions, or positions involving national security or public safety.
