The Economic Legacy of DOGE

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Thanks for reading! If you haven’t subscribed, please click the button below:Subscribe nowBy subscribing, you’ll join over 75,000 people who read Apricitas!Just one year ago, Elon Musk rushed into the White House as the head of the newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency”, or DOGE, aiming to radically shrink the federal government. Without approval from Congress, DOGE attempted to functionally dissolve the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the United States Agency for International Development, the US Institute of Peace, and several other agencies. The civil servants in charge of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Social Security Administration were all bumped aside as Elon aimed to control key spending processes in the federal government. Grants for universities, charities, businesses, and scientists were temporarily withheld or cancelled. Musk fired tens of thousands of federal employees and pushed all those remaining to take the opportunity to resign.After a chaotic six months, DOGE itself was functionally shuttered, and Elon was out as part of a then-acrimonious breakup over his opposition to the increased deficit spending in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Yet it took until today before we could finally examine the macroeconomic impacts of DOGE, as all the federal employees on deferred resignation programs were only formally laid off near the end of 2025.DOGE’s legacy is officially the single-largest annual decline in the federal workforce in 75 years—with total federal employment down by rou…