Musk and Ramaswamy's federal jobs cut proposal could affect thousands in Northwest Arkansas
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Northwest Arkansas and other areas across the country could soon see job cuts by a key employer — the federal government.
Why it matters: As co-chair alongside Elon Musk of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy hopes to dramatically reduce federal government headcount.
- Ramaswamy said last week that the reduction is not "really about saving costs," but addressing what he sees as an "overgrown federal government that is doing things that were never supposed to be done by the federal government in the first place."
By the numbers: About 1.9% of NWA's workforce — nearly 5,500 people — were employed by the federal government in 2022, per the most recent Census Bureau data available.
- The number is nearly 4% in the Little Rock and Conway metropolitan statistical area, with more than 13,500 employees.
Zoom out: Regionally, Oklahoma City (about 39,000 workers), Tulsa, Oklahoma, (10,000), the Kansas City area (37,600) and even Wichita, Kansas, (about 8,300) could impacted by massive federal job cuts.
- This could lead to a ripple effect on Arkansas' tourism, outdoor recreation and nascent next-generation transportation economies.
What he's saying: Ramaswamy believes that cutting the workforce will improve the "productivity" of the U.S. economy, "because I don't believe that the highest and best use of any of those talented people is what they're doing in the federal government today."
- He said that because cutting the size of the workforce is not about cost-cutting, it gives DOGE "a lot of latitude" to treat federal employees and their families "in a respectful way, in a way that doesn't leave them in a lurch, it might even be by private sector standards, generous in transitioning."
Between the lines: When he was running for president last year, Ramaswamy said he would immediately fire 50% of "federal bureaucrats" if he was elected.
- But actually achieving those cuts will be much harder in practice, especially given that DOGE is only a non-governmental advisory committee.
- Musk and Ramaswamy could also face blowback from lawmakers who don't want their constituents who are federal employees to be out of work.
Go deeper: See Ramaswamy's conversation with Axios' Mike Allen on C-SPAN.