Setting the Record Straight About Telework Use by Federal Employees

Given recent misstatements by lawmakers and members of President-elect Trump’s transition team regarding the use of telework in the federal government, the American Federation of Government Employees wants to set the record straight.

Exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and portraying those who do as failing to show up for work is a deliberate attempt to demean the federal workforce and justify the wholesale privatization of public-sector jobs. AFGE believes that facts matter, and that lawmakers should be guided by the facts when making decisions that affect the lives of their constituents.

Federal Employee Telework: Myth vs. Fact

MYTH: “We only have six percent of our federal workforce actually going into work every single day.” – Senator Joni Ernst on FOX News, December 5, 2024

FACT: 54% of federal workers work completely in-person at jobs that require them to be on-site each day. Only 10% of civilian federal personnel are in fully remote positions. Among the subset of federal workers who are telework but not remote work eligible, 61.2% of working hours are spent in-person. [Source: OMB Report to Congress on Telework and Real Property Utilization – August 2024]

MYTH: “If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” – Elon Musk, X.com, December 5, 2024

FACT: Among those federal workers who are eligible for telework, more than half (61.2%) of regular working hours were spent in-person. [Source: OMB Report to Congress on Telework and Real Property Utilization – August 2024]

MYTH: “Nearly one-third of federal workers are entirely remote.” – Senator Joni Ernst, Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings

FACT: Just 228,000, or 10%, of the 2.28 million federal civilian workers were in remote positions where there was no expectation that they worked in-person on any regular or recurring basis. [Source: OMB Report to Congress on Telework and Real Property Utilization – August 2024]

MYTH: “Here’s the dirty little secret in the federal bureaucracy today, most people don’t even show up to work.” – Vivek Ramaswamy, FOX Business, November 18, 2024

FACT: Excluding fully remote-eligible workers who do not have an in-person worksite, federal workers are in the office for 79.4% of their working hours. [Source: OMB Report to Congress on Telework and Real Property Utilization – August 2024]

MYTH: “Service backlogs and delays, unanswered phone calls and emails, and no-show appointments

are harming the health, lives, and aspirations of Americans.” – Senator Joni Ernst, Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings

FACT: Telework both increases employee engagement and helps recruit and retain workers who provide vital public services to the American people. [Source: US Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Requesters: Federal Telework, November 2024]

MYTH: “Most federal workers are eligible to telework and 90 percent of those are.” – Senator Joni Ernst, Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings

FACT: Fewer than half of federal workers (46.4%) are eligible for telework. [Source: OMB Report to Congress on Telework and Real Property Utilization – August 2024]

MYTH: “Our goal is not to be cruel, by the way, to the individual federal employees… We want to be compassionate and generous in how we handle this transition.” – Vivek Ramaswamy, FOX News, November 17, 2024

FACT: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.” – Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, ProPublica, October 28, 2024