The Protection Division’s civilian workforce is reporting a precipitous drop in job satisfaction, based on a survey launched Thursday, following a 12 months of cuts and a hiring freeze that has left many places of work understaffed and staff in concern of additional reductions in pressure.
Performed by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, the survey reveals that civilian employees with the Navy and Marine Corps have seen the largest plunge in satisfaction, from a rating of 68.1 out of 100 in 2024 to 36.4 in 2025. The scores for Air Pressure employees dropped from 67 to 38.5; Military, from 70.3 to 48.1; and the protection secretary’s workplace, the Joint Employees and different fourth-estate organizations, from 63.6 to 40.6.
Simply 9.1 p.c of Military staff agreed that “Secretary of Warfare Pete Hegseth’s political management crew generates excessive ranges of motivation within the workforce,” the survey report stated, they usually had been essentially the most glad of any of the massive businesses surveyed.
The navy departments didn’t reply to a request for remark from Protection One on Friday.
Requested whether or not representatives had been conscious of the survey outcomes and had any initiatives underway to handle low morale, Pentagon spokesman Jacob Bliss accused Protection One in every of “cherry-picking” components of the survey and accused the Partnership for Public Service of being anti-Trump.
Bliss didn’t reply to a follow-up request to explain which components of the survey would give a extra fulsome understanding of the outcomes.
The Partnership for Public Service carried out the survey by itself for the primary time this 12 months. Traditionally, they’ve primarily based their “Greatest Locations to Work in Federal Authorities” report on knowledge from the annual Federal Staff Viewpoint Survey, which the Workplace of Personnel Administration is legally required to conduct.
However final 12 months, OPM leaders introduced that they wouldn’t conduct the survey as a result of they wanted to vary the inquiries to adjust to the Trump administration’s new anti-diversity insurance policies.
“This workforce has been essentially traumatized in the best way that this management crew stated that they meant to do on the outset,” Max Stier, Partnership for Public Service’s CEO, instructed Authorities Govt. “That’s not good for anybody. It’s dangerous for the workforce, it’s essentially dangerous for the American folks, and it’ll result in us to be much less protected, wholesome and affluent as a society. The issues that we would like and want from authorities will not be what we’ll get.”
The survey of some 11,000 federal employees produced outcomes in step with private tales from Protection civilians about low morale, drops in productiveness and concern of involuntary cuts which have hung over the civilian workforce for the previous 12 months.
Some 14 p.c of DOD’s previously 795,000-strong civilian workforce left in 2025, both by voluntary or involuntary means, with about 30,000 employed in jobs exempt from the continued hiring freeze.
Stier burdened that the survey knowledge comes from those that remained after the majority of the cuts occurred throughout the 2025 fiscal 12 months, not from doubtlessly disgruntled staff who left voluntarily or had been fired for doubtful efficiency points.
“The reality of the matter is that we all know from focus teams and different issues we’ve accomplished that that is in keeping with the entire anecdotal info we have now gotten,” he stated. “Now we have talked to hundreds of staff by means of varied programming, and the message constantly has been that they’re fearful, that they’re being mistreated, and the entire info on the bottom counsel that they’ve been traumatized.”
Erich Wagner contributed to this report.
