Politics
Supporters of Trump’s agency cuts still favor nonpartisan federal workforce, survey shows
The Trump administration has taken a multi-pronged approach to overhauling the civil service — attempting to open the doors more political appointees, while also making it easier to remove career federal employees from their jobs. But those workforce changes don’t appear to resonate positively with many Americans, including those who are supportive of the administration’s federal workforce cuts more broadly.
In a recent survey, the Partnership for Public Service found that among individuals who approve of the Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies, there is little support for a politicized federal workforce. The survey results showed that 83% of supporters of the Trump administration’s cuts agreed that having an expert and non-political federal workforce was “critical” to the country’s wellbeing.
Paul Hitlin, the Partnership’s senior research manager, said those results indicate that any support for agency cuts and employee layoffs instead come from a different desire.
“It really is about cutting spending, and certainly waste and fraud,” Hitlin said Tuesday during a virtual event hosted by the Partnership. “It’s not about putting in a civil service that is political in nature.”
Supporters of the administration’s cuts were also more opposed to the idea of a politicized federal workforce than those who were against the cuts. For instance, 76% of supporters of the administration’s cuts said civil servants should be “apolitical,” while 70% of those opposed to the cuts answered the same way.
Results from 2025 survey on the public’s perception of the Trump administration’s federal workforce cuts. (Source: Partnership for Public Service)
Still, the Trump administration has been pressing forward with significant changes in the structure of the civil service. Most recently, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a new class of federal employment, called Schedule G. The classification is reserved for political appointments who focus specifically on policy-making or policy-advocating work.
Earlier this year, Trump also revived his previous Schedule F executive order — now called Schedule Policy/Career — which aims to reclassify career federal employees to strip their civil service protections and make them easier for agencies to fire.
The White House has said its efforts will make the federal workforce more accountable and give agencies more flexibility in deciding who to retain or remove from their jobs. But many organizations, including the Partnership, have spoken out against the administration’s policies and warned they will lead to a politicization of the non-partisan federal workforce.
“You do not see a lot of support for that, even among people who are in favor of the administration’s cuts,” Hitlin said.
The Partnership’s survey also showed positive public perceptions of the federal workforce, despite growing rhetoric from the Trump administration criticizing the career civil service and promising to “drain the swamp.” In the results, 51% of respondents said they opposed the recent federal workforce layoffs, while 37% supported the layoffs and 12% were unsure.
“We also found in some of our focus groups that there was a lot of uncertainty, even among people who support the cuts,” Hitlin said. “And there’s a large amount of people who said that they thought there might be some hiccups and problems, but they still thought [the cuts were] worth it overall.”
Over the last several years, the Partnership has also regularly published polling results that show public trust in government continues to decline. In 2024, 23% of Americans said they trusted the federal government — an 11% decrease since 2022. But the Partnership’s research has also shown that the public trusts career civil servants themselves more than the federal government as a whole.
“By focusing on the elements of the government that may not receive as much attention as Congress —such as civil servants and the missions of federal agencies — an opportunity exists to increase the public’s trust,” the Partnership has said.
More recently, supporters of the Trump administration’s federal workforce overhauls remain in the minority, according to the Partnership’s latest survey results. Over 50% of survey respondents said they believed the cuts would hurt the U.S. economy, make Americans less safe and make their communities worse.
When asked to select their top three concerns about the cuts, most survey respondents said they were worried about the government’s ability to deliver benefits like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
“Other things like disease research and prevention, food safety and veterans’ health care and benefits — a lot of people selected those as well,” Hitlin said. “But by far, delivery of benefits was the top concern.”
In its latest survey results, the Partnership also found that roughly one-third of respondents said they or someone they know had been personally impacted by the administration’s cuts to agencies.
“This isn’t just an ‘inside the beltway’ story,” Hitlin said. “Large numbers of people are making connections about how these cuts are affecting things around them and seeing that. And over time, that number may grow.”
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