Musk’s DOGE wants to ‘delete’ entire government agencies. Here’s where the most people are employed and what they make.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is floating cutting federal agencies.

Elon Musk’s government-efficiency commission could end up costing some federal workers their jobs.

As he and the former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy begin to outline their priorities as leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency, created by Donald Trump, one of those priorities seems to be eliminating government agencies.

Most recently, Ramaswamy told Fox News, “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.”

More than 2 million Americans collect their paychecks from the federal government, so B-17 looked into which agencies employ the most people and what they pay on average.

When asked about areas the commission would prioritize for spending cuts, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, previously told B-17: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

The US government is the largest employer in the country

The US Office of Personnel Management showed eight cabinet-level agencies, which are at the center of the executive branch and have heads that report directly to the president, had more than 100,000 civilian employees as of March.

Almost half a million people were employed in the Department of Veterans Affairs, while the Department of Education had just over 4,000. The Treasury Department had more than 100,000 employees as of March. The overwhelming majority of those — about 94,000 — were employed in the Internal Revenue Service.

Most departments had six-figure average salaries, with the Department of Education and the Department of Energy having the highest averages.

During Ramaswamy’s Sunday appearance on Fox News, he said, “We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.”

While neither Trump, Musk, nor Ramaswamy has made clear which departments could be on the chopping block, Trump has targeted the Department of Education in the past, saying in 2023: “One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states.”

Musk said during October remarks that while the commission’s goal was to cut spending by reducing head count, he’d consider giving impacted workers “very long severances” that could amount to two years’ pay.

“The point is not to be cruel or to have people not be able to pay their mortgage or anything,” Musk said during his October remarks, adding, “We just have too many people in the government sector, and they could be more productive elsewhere.”

The US Office of Personnel Management says on its website that “severance pay is authorized for full-time and part-time employees who are involuntarily separated from Federal service and who meet other conditions of eligibility.” A spokesperson for the office told B-17 that the severance policy was up to date and that it “cannot comment on the actions of future administrations.”

While the two leaders of the initiative have started to detail the areas of government spending they’re looking to target, DOGE is not an official government agency. Past commissions on government spending, such as the Grace Commission under former President Ronald Reagan, gave the president and Congress advice on areas to cut.

DOGE can advise Trump on agencies to cut, but the president-elect cannot act on it alone — making major changes to federal agencies would require congressional approval.

Plus, DOGE’s goals could still change. It’s unclear how exactly the commission would function and whether Congress would approve Musk and Ramaswamy’s spending cuts. B-17 previously reported that the US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024. With Social Security, health programs, and Medicare topping the spending list, they could be on the commission’s chopping block. But Medicare and Social Security are forms of mandatory spending that would require legislation to change.