PROPUBLICA is a non -profit editorial staff that investigates the abuse of power. Initially, this story was published in our dispatch ballot; specify Get notes from our journalists.
As Presidential Administration Donald Trump throws one state agency after another in “a wooden crumbs“Wonderful statistics on federal workers continue to come: only 6% of federal workers work full -time in their offices.
By any post-pandemic standard, this is an amazing amount, especially when large US corporations move workers back to the office five days a week.
It is also completely untrue.
You may ask why one specific false statement should be taken if there are so many wrong facts and figures that pour the public conversation area. Last month, we witnessed the spectacle of the White House press secretary Caroline, falsely announcing that the Government’s Government’s Department of Government Elon Musk and the Office for Management and Budget “found that up to $ 50 million with taxpayers who came out of the door finance “. Will general Video about a briefing on X, which said it is the tip of the iceberg. A few days later, the president doubled, saying that his administration had prevented the delivery to Hamas $ 100 million. “
A swarm of Checking facts Divorced these disputes, noting that: records from the US Agency for International Development have shown that there was no such program for Gaza; The amount of money exceeded the world budget for the purchase of condoms; And this will mean more than 1 billion condoms for approximately 1 million Palestinian men living in gas.
It took a two -week mask to abandon the claim to the condom, saying What “We’ll make mistakes, but we will act quickly to correct any mistakes.”
The look at how the administration was engaged in quickly decayed and obviously the wrong statement about who works at home, shows that “mistakes” correction is far from usual for the White House or for famous Republicans.
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6% of statistics invaded public consciousness in early December last year when Senator Johnny Ernst, Republican Iowa, released the report About the federal workers with a provocative headline: “By the office: bureaucrats on the beach and in bubbles, but not in office buildings.” Ernst has just been called Congress Congress, created to support Dogel, and she has long been a vocal critic that he considers a wasteful expense.
The lawsuit was immediately selected NEW YORK POSTcommentator Sean Honit and other allies of Trump. Hannity Twitter “Work for DOGE: Only 6% of federal employees work from the full -time office, some don’t work at all: Audit”.
The post continued through hours later Editing that ridiculed federal staff For them “privilege” and asked: “How much nation needs a nation?” The Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson told reporters: “This is inappropriate, and this is not that the American people will perform.”
Musk retouvi stories Post More than 200 million followers appeared to it shortly after it appeared. He said that everything was worse than revealed the report, claiming that “if you exclude security guards and employees, the number of state -owned workers who are personally and perform 40 hours a week, closer to 1%!”
The 6% figure impressed me as very implausible. I started my career in Norfolk, Virginia, where the largest Navy base in the world lives. I was thinking about the number of people needed for the staff of the air carriers for deployment, which lasts for many months. After Norfolk, I spent years illuminating national security. Considering the restrictions on the appeal with classified information, it is unlikely that anyone from the special services, the State Department and the Pentagon can work at home.
I was looking for a copy of the Ernst reports on the Internet and quickly found an excerpt stating: “Six percent of the report is full -time, and almost a third of the government labor is quite remotely.” The footnote refers to a single source: History published months earlier Federal News NetworkThe information organization in the suburbs of Washington, which carefully covers the world of state workers. The organization invited readers to respond to online questioning about their working habits, attracting 6338 from the federal labor of 2.2 million. The story of a reporter Drey Friedman noted that only 6% of respondents reported that they were working full in the office.
The day after Ernst released its report, the federal news network added Note editor To a message stating that Friedman’s story was redesigned to “clarify that the poll was a non -scientific survey of the respondents who independently reported that they are current federal staff and who were chosen.”
Editors said they also added data from August 2024 Study Management and budgetWhich found out that 54% of the federal labor had to appear in the office every day. According to the study, only 10% of federal employees worked exclusively at home. Those who allow the hybrid graphics to spend an average of 60% of their working time in federal offices.
In the world of journalism, this is how editors try to solve outrageous wrong reading. Jared Serbian, Deputy Editor -in -Chief of Federal News Network, said he and his colleagues were embarrassed by how obviously the unscientific poll of his organization had somehow turned into decisive statistics on federal employees.
“It was a poll of our niche audience for our niche audience,” the Serbian said. “No one was ever confused.”
Later in December, television The editor’s note is quoted and marked with 6% “false” number. Approximately at the same time Politifact considered Johnson’s statement that only 1% federal workers are working every day and marked him ‘pants in the fire“,” The lowest rating of the site for a statement that “is not accurate and makes an inappropriate claim.”
This was to finish the conversation. But it wasn’t.
January 20, Trump’s first day in office, White House issued a statement This brazenly referred to Musk’s upcoming attack on federal agencies. It states that Trump “plans to improve the accounting of state bureaucrats. The American people deserve the highest service from people who love our country. The president will also return federal workers to work because only 6% of employees work personally.”
A week later, a senior administration official cited a 6% indicator, explaining the plans to reduce the size of the federal labor through the redemption. “We went to COVID five years, and only 6% of federal staff work full-time,” the official said Axios and NBC NEWS. The quote also appeared in a note sent by the White House of the Republican Allies, Reported to the daily wire.
I asked at the press secretary of Ernst Za Zaka Cofta whether the senator plans to fix or change her report. He said there was no one.
“To set the record right – if the federal employees really appeared in large numbers, their return to work would not be controversial,” Kraft said in an email. He noted that the bill, made by Ernst, will require the federal leaders “to take a daily visit, so everyone knows who points to work and who is not.”
The White House did not answer my questions about why his statement on January 20 referred to a claim about federal workers who were so clearly refuted. Imagination of federal workers as lazy and Indoletant continues to be the Central aspect of the President’s plans to reduce the government’s employment.
On Wednesday, Miami Trump said federal workers should “show themselves personally as the rest of us,” adding: “You can’t work at home. They don’t work. They play tennis, they play golf or others But they do not work or of course. Trump went to golf on nine of his first 30 days in office.)
It is said that we live in society after the facts that everything is controversial and nothing really known. I harshly disagree. Now, as never before, the facts, and the propublica, will continue to track how and when false statements are clearly introduced into important talk about the future of this country.
