Only 2 percent of the US workforce works for the federal government. If you fired half of them as Musk has suggested that would hit roughly 70% working in military- or security-related agencies.
There are 2.3 million Americans working for the federal government in civilian jobs, a tally that has steadily climbed as control of the White House has shifted between parties and presidents. They constitute less than 2% of the total U.S. workforce. They work as everything from nurses in Veterans Affairs hospitals and park rangers in Yellowstone to guards in federal prisons and the 19 employees of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. About 80% of them work outside of the Washington, D.C., region. Many of the jobs could become targets of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, the entity President-elect Donald Trump has said will trim costs under the direction of billionaire industrialist Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk has told people—possibly in jest—that more than half of the government’s employees should be fired. Roughly 70% of the civilian roles are in military- or security-related agencies. Veterans Affairs has the most civilian workers, mainly because it operates hundreds of hospitals and clinics. Homeland Security, created in 2002, is now the third largest. The Education Department, with 4,425 workers, is the smallest.
Source: Wall Street Journal