Just six percent of the federal workforce reports “in-person on a full-time basis,” according to a new Senate report on government efficiency.
Nearly one-third of federal workers are remote on a full-time basis, a stark contrast to the way the federal government operated before the pandemic where a measly three percent worked remotely daily, according to the New York Post.
Sen. Joni Ernst’s office collaborated with a nonprofit group that advocates for government transparency to issue a report on the increasing number of work-from-home federal employees. Open the Book, in tandem with the Senator’s office, uncovered the work locations “of over 281,000 rank-and-file federal employees.”
The federal government currently owns about 7,697 vacant buildings and 2,265 that are somewhat empty, according to the report. These vacancies and assets cost approximately $15 million in leasing and maintenance costs annually for space that is rarely, if ever, being used.
Many federal employees also have higher salaries based on their localities to cover the high cost of living in larger cities. However, Ernst’s report uncovered that teleworking employees receive higher wages while living in areas with a relatively low cost of living.
“Government salaries are determined, in part, by the location of an employee’s official worksite. There are 58 locality pay areas with base pay for federal employees adjusted to account for the cost of living in each,” the report states.
“Some employees live more than 2,000 miles away from their office and one ‘temporary’ teleworker collected higher locality pay for nearly a decade,” the report reads.
Over 25% of remote federal employees live over 50 miles away from their workplace.
Elon Musk opined on the report in a post to his social media platform X saying, “If you exclude security guards [and] maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!”
“Almost no one,” Musk concluded.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
