Government workers aren’t exactly being hailed as heroes these days — at least not in the United States. From Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on a bloated federal bureaucracy full of idealogues, the public sector is under siege.
The exact numbers are hard to come by, but a Reuters article — citing figures assembled by Challenger, Gray and Christmas — found there had been more than 63,500 cuts linked both directly to the federal workforce and contractors.
That’s akin to a company like ADP, which has about 64,000 employees, going under. Or Hyundai, which has about 63,000 workers. In short, it’s massive — and Musk and DOGE are just getting started on a strategy that is less scalpel and more chainsaw.
I’ve never worked in government, but I believe a robust public service has real benefits we rarely acknowledge and vastly underestimate.
Sure, we can argue about exactly how many civil servants we need, and debate whether certain departments should shrink or grow. That’s democracy.
What is troubling is the hostility toward people who dedicate their careers to the public good. It’s as if every time someone sees a government employee, they imagine a lazy paper-pusher.
Trump has only added fuel to that fire. Asked by NBC News whether he feels responsible for so many people losing their jobs, Trump said: “Sure I do. I feel very badly … but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”
An example of that hostility can be found with Luke Tobin, a 24-year-old who was fired from his job as a technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.
“I’ve been treated as a public enemy by the government and now it’s bleeding into my own family,” says Tobin. “They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones.”
Meanwhile, the true economic impact of these workers — and the ripples they create in the broader economy — goes unnoticed.
Here’s what many trolls miss: Government salaries don’t just benefit the people who receive them. A dollar paid to a public sector worker doesn’t vanish into a black hole of bureaucracy — it flows back into local businesses, small towns, and big cities alike.
Every time a federal employee goes out for lunch, buys groceries, visits a local mechanic, or takes the family on vacation, money cascades through the economy. Restaurants stay open, supply chains keep moving, and shops stay in business. The taxes that government workers pay — on income, property, and sales — directly fund everything from roads to schools.
Meanwhile, the businesses and employees in other sectors collect their own income, pay their own taxes, and spend in their own communities. That’s the multiplier effect in action.
Let’s say a federal government worker earns $70,000 a year in Canada. At first glance, it sounds like taxpayers are on the hook for the full $70,000. But factor in income taxes that come right back to Ottawa, plus the sales tax on everything from a weekly grocery run to new furniture. Add on property taxes that help keep municipalities afloat. And then consider the fact that these same government employees support other workers — cooks, wait staff, car dealers — who pay their own workers and taxes, and you start to see why the net “cost” to taxpayers is nowhere near as large as it looks on paper.
Economists often assign a multiplier of around 1.0 to 1.3 (sometimes even higher) to government salaries, meaning each $1 paid out can generate more than $1 in total economic output once the ripple effects are considered. When governments wipe out tens of thousands of these jobs, the opposite happens: local businesses in the capital region and beyond lose revenue, other workers lose tips or commissions, and eventually they too may be laid off.
That’s a pretty big price to pay for what might only save the government a fraction of the salary figure it’s cutting.
Of course, there’s a fair debate to be had about the size and scope of government. Are there redundant programs or offices that can be consolidated? Probably. Are there agencies that should shift priorities, especially in a fast-changing world? Absolutely. But those are questions of strategy and policy, not fodder for petty revenge or ideological crusades.
Some folks in the U.S. have decided to vilify every bureaucrat because they don’t like what one agency does, or because they see government workers as “waste.” That’s a dangerous oversimplification — one that can lead to hasty cuts and serious economic fallout.
The Reuters article paints a clear picture of the disruption: “The government has laid off about 62,530 workers in the first two months of the year, a whopping 41,311% increase compared to the same period in 2024.”
That’s not just a statistic; it’s a collective gut-punch to tens of thousands of livelihoods, families, and communities. It’s also a surefire way to shake consumer confidence at a time when the economy is already fragile.
For those who say the public sector is deadweight, I invite you to consider how many times you’ve relied on government employees or their work — whether it’s the roads you drive on, the schools your kids attend, or the public health oversight that keeps your food supply safe. Government has its flaws; no one would deny that. But demonizing public workers as if they’re lazy or incompetent is a disservice to the countless men and women who try to make their corner of society function a little better each day.
As a Canadian, I don’t pretend to have the perfect recipe for how the U.S. should manage its federal workforce. It’s also, arguably, none of my business. I just hope that leaders on our side of the border aren’t inspired by this nonsense.
What I do know is that the public sector has far-reaching effects that can’t be measured solely by a line in a budget. Those who remain in their posts after these waves of cuts face uncertainty and fear for what might come next. Meanwhile, the restaurants and car dealerships they frequented, the supply chains they sustained, and the families they supported will all feel the pinch, too.
Government jobs may be taxpayer-funded, but the return on that investment is rarely as lopsided as critics suggest. If anything, we might find that reducing federal jobs on such a large scale costs more in the long run— through lost tax revenue, shuttered small businesses, and rising unemployment in other sectors.
That’s a lesson Americans might soon learn the hard way.
We can absolutely question how many public employees are needed and where they should be deployed. But let’s not reduce complex realities to cheap slogans, envy, or anger. There’s a difference between targeted reforms and the kind of slash-and-burn approach that punishes both public servants and the communities relying on them.
In the end, you don’t have to be a federal employee to appreciate how vital a robust public sector can be. I may be just an onlooker from across the border, but it’s obvious that when you cut the limbs of government, the rest of the economy bleeds, too.
