{"id":1933,"date":"2026-06-04T13:36:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=1933"},"modified":"2026-06-04T13:36:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:36:33","slug":"interest-in-government-careers-dipped-after-2025-federal-workforce-purge-harvard-research-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=1933","title":{"rendered":"Interest in government careers dipped after 2025 federal workforce purge, Harvard research finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<p><span>Following the Trump administration\u2019s federal workforce purge in 2025, Americans\u2019 interest in public sector careers has declined, a Harvard survey found. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=1931\">Cambridge emerges from intense back-and-forth battle with Natick in Division 1 baseball tourney<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>The research, conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School\u2019s People Lab from December 2025 to March 2026, showed a 9 percent decrease in public service career attractiveness among all survey respondents. Among Democrats, the decline was more pronounced at 18 percent. Meanwhile Black Americans surveyed reported a whopping 41 percent decrease in government career interest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cIt\u2019s really striking that we\u2019re seeing such large gaps even in just a three-month period. And so, I want to see if this is something that will continue as we do more quarterly surveys,\u201d said Elizabeth Linos, a Harvard public policy professor and faculty director of the People Lab. \u201cPeople\u2019s interest in government is very correlated with their trust in government.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span>Last year, the federal workforce shrank by about 220,000 people following the Trump administration\u2019s bureaucracy-slashing directives, led early on by Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency. Black employees, especially women, were disproportionately affected by the job cuts.<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><span>Get Starting Point<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span>A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><label>Enter Email<\/label><\/p>\n<div><button>Sign Up<\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span>Linos said the survey results cannot be separated from the context of this political moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cWhen the Trump administration came in \u2014 and DOGE in particular actively elevated that discourse that was attacking public servants, attacking the work that they did, eliminating agencies \u2014 [the government\u2019s recruitment] problem becomes much more complicated,&#8221; she said. \u201cNot only did we lose a lot of the talent that was already in the federal government, but now the discourse around what it means to be a government worker is much more negative than it needs to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Even so, the survey found that a majority of Americans view public servants favorably.Sixty-eight percent of respondents found government workers to be competent, while 57 percent gave them positive marks for integrity. Still, private sector employees were generally more well regarded. For example, the survey recorded a 36-point gap between respondents\u2019 evaluation of private sector employees\u2019 ability to innovate compared to government workers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=1929\">Patriots\u2019 schedule of three preseason games announced<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>The strongest predictor of how Americans perceive government employees, the survey found, is party affiliation. Democrats generally hold more favorable views on public sector workers than Republicans and Independents. Partisan differences were especially prominent when respondents were asked about specific occupations within government. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Democrats were more than twice as likely to rate the integrity of election officials favorably. On the other hand, Republicans were more than four times as likely to hold positive views of ICE agents\u2019 competence. Firefighters, meanwhile, were rated highly across the political spectrum.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know what came first,\u201d Linos said, \u201clike whether or not this [perception] is a product of existing political polarization or if it\u2019s causing it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>What\u2019s clear from the research, however, is that language matters when describing public employees. When called \u201cbureaucrats,\u201d the survey showed, government workers were more likely to be imagined as white, male, and belonging to the opposite political party of the survey respondent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>For Linos, the relationship between Americans\u2019 perception of public employees and their faith in government services is inextricable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cIf you don\u2019t invest in the people of government, in producing public sector agencies that can deliver, then people are going to assume that the agencies can\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cThat creates the sense that [government] is inefficient and wasteful over time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=1927\">Jaylen Brown\u2019s Fort Point penthouse is back on the market for $4.9m<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;People\u2019s interest in government is very correlated with their trust in government,&#8221; said Elizabeth Linos, a Harvard public policy professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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