1 day ago

Federal workers split over return-to-office mandate. Some are job hunting.

Federal workers are sharply divided over President Donald Trump’s return-to-office mandate, and more than a quarter of those who say they were previously able to do their jobs from home are actively looking for another job, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

Across the federal workforce, 49 percent of employees support and 50 percent oppose a five-day in-office requirement. But among federal employees who say their duties can be performed from home, 85 percent are in opposition, according to the poll. Meanwhile, 70 percent of workers who say they can’t work remotely back the mandate.

Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.

The poll’s findings come amid a chaotic and rushed return-to-office push, in conjunction with the broad confusion over whether thousands of federal workers will be able to keep their jobs after several lawsuits have challenged the administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the workforce.

Some federal workers have reported that there is not nearly enough desk space for all of them, after many offices were downsized in recent years, and that they are forced to work in conference rooms or closets or kill time in hallways while they wait for desks to open up. The Federal Emergency Management Agency instructed supervisors to resolve some conflicts over workspaces via coin flip.

Some workers returned to the office only to learn that the Trump administration had canceled their building’s lease, while some remote employees were given just days’ notice to report to offices hundreds of miles away.

A Defense Health Agency employee in Florida, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said he’d been teleworking since the coronavirus pandemic, reporting to the office two to three days a week, before he was ordered back full time.

“Personally, it was way easier to stay at home,” he said. “The work gets done at home or at the office. Productivity is no different.”

The employee, who will soon turn 61, has worked for the federal government for more than 20 years and said the return-to-office mandate will probably cause him to retire early. “I was originally going to work till 67 or something,” he said. “Now I think I’ll go at 62, if Elon Musk doesn’t fire me before then.”

The Post-Ipsos poll finds that 37 percent of current federal employees say they can perform their duties from home. When employees of the U.S. Postal Service - which operates largely independently of the federal government and whose workers almost all need to be in post offices or the field - are excluded, that figure rises to 46 percent.

Of the workers who say their work can be done remotely, more than a third say they hadn’t been assigned a specific desk or workspace.

The poll finds that 57 percent of federal workers believe most or all of Trump’s executive orders affecting their agency are illegal, and 71 percent of federal workers are concerned about the government’s ability to function if large numbers of employees are terminated. Even among the 38 percent of federal workers who said they voted for Trump, fewer than half think he would improve their agency’s ability to fulfill its mission.

A Defense Department employee in the Southeast, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said her subagency has had a telework culture since before the pandemic.

“When I was hired, one of the selling points of the position - and career, really - was, hey, we’re a telework agency,” she said. “So you think, cool, work-life balance.”

But in February, she and her colleagues were required to report in person five days a week, and the office wasn't equipped to accommodate all of them, she said, with workers forced to share cubicles intended for one person.

“When everyone rushed back, there’s not enough space, not enough parking, not enough desks, not enough chairs,” she said. “Buildings were not ready to accommodate the masses.”

Echoing a concern shared by employees of other federal agencies, she also said there is nowhere to get food in or near the office, with only a “little micromart-type thing” for employees who don’t bring their own lunch.

James Otis, who works as a Transportation Security Administration supervisor at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and as a U.S. Mmarshal, said the return-to-office mandate had been “stressful.” At the TSA, he said, many employees who had been working remotely or teleworking - reviewing camera footage from home, for example - quit rather than return to full-time in-person work, leaving a heavier workload for everyone else.

Now - like the 27 percent of remote-capable federal workers who say they’re looking for another job - he’s contemplating a career change, too. “In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been looking for other stuff to do,” Otis said. He’s considering jobs in private security, working with his father or opening his own business.

“It’s just too much,” he said of his workload.

- - -

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll was conducted Feb. 28-March 10, 2025, among 614 civilian federal workers as of Jan. 1, including 571 current federal workers. The survey was conducted online via the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, an ongoing survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. The overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.1 percentage points, and among the sample of current workers, it is 5.3 points.

- - -

Graphics:

https://washingtonpost.com/documents/5576d369-b3da-48f5-b146-57797971fdcc.pdf

https://washingtonpost.com/documents/2629ed26-d622-4043-a195-5bfc8b776f0c.pdf

https://washingtonpost.com/documents/694032b9-7e06-4d12-a429-4cd950b87c77.pdf