Three years into the Trump administration’s promised war on the administrative state, the attacks have hit their mark, with the morale of the government workforce showing a decline for the first time in six years. Morale among the country’s roughly 2 million federal workers dropped by half of a point in 2019, the first drop since 2014, according to annual surveys largely administered by the Office of Personnel Management. Michael has the story.
— The very lowest score among mid-sized agencies was at the Education Department, according to an analysis of the data by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that studies the executive branch, and management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group. The latest assessment comes as Secretary Betsy DeVos has been engaged in an ongoing battle with the union and has curtailed teleworking, a move that was internally unpopular at the agency.
— The department saw a drop in employee engagement for the fourth year in a row with declines driven by drops in how employees scored the effectiveness of the agency’s leadership, including senior officials, according to the data. Here’s how some individual offices fared: