Kerby Anderson

Stephen Moore asks an important question: “What if federal workers never showed up for work and no one missed them?” He says that may be one of the greatest federal government scandals. Over the last three years, many hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been getting a full-time paycheck but have not been showing up for work.

Just because they aren’t at their desks doesn’t mean they aren’t working. No doubt some are working just as hard. But consider the staggering fact that at the end of 2022, only about one in three federal bureaucrats were on the job in the office.

Since the pandemic and lockdowns, more employees in the private sector have been working remotely. But more and more of them are in the office. That is not what is happening in the federal bureaucracy. Most are at home, even though many of those federal jobs cannot and should not be done remotely.

Stephen Moore reminds us that “the COVID scare ended 2 1/2 years ago, and most private businesses have demanded their employees show up for work at least some of the time — or find a new employer.” That threat doesn’t exist for the 1.9 million federal employees, who often make more than $100,000 a year in salaries and benefits.

He also wonders if this absence from the federal workplace has a silver lining. You may have noticed (as he has noticed) that there isn’t much difference between whether these workers were on the job or not. We are nearing the possibility of a government shutdown over the debt ceiling vote. But maybe we really won’t notice much of a difference if the government shuts down for a time since most of these federal workers aren’t on the job anyway.

To answer his first question, we didn’t know these federal workers weren’t on the job because we never really missed them, and perhaps don’t even need them.