Hi folks! Another month, another jobs day. Somewhat larger reductions this month: May number of federal employees is 2,956k. January data was 3,015k for a total decline of 59k. Extrapolation of the linear trend to twelve months estimates a total reduction of 141.6k.

@jb456 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

Kalshi over the last month...

@polymathematic wow lmao even

April jobs data: Number of federal employees in April is 2,989k. January data was 3,015k for a total decline of 26k. Extrapolation of the linear trend to one year suggests a total reduction of 104k federal workers.

@jb456 Source https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf at

Table B1

Here is a quite helpful tracker that gathers together the different announcements and workforce reductions so far by agency: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/02/rif-watch-see-which-agencies-are-laying-federal-workers/403342/

Not wise to take the resignation deal in the economy we’re about to see.

@Panfilo and yet… from my vantage point large amounts of Feds do seem to be taking it 😬

@brianwang my man just locked in a loss in order to move the listed percentage higher

@SteveAcomb are you doing comms for the admin or something?

@SteveAcomb

this is the behavior of someone willing to take a loss in order to manage public perception

@SteveAcomb or someone who just doesn’t understand how manifold works :P

@SteveAcomb he sold at 55?! lol

@NicoMach and then bought fewer of the more expensive shares back up to 67, yeah 🤣

it loses him mana, but because the percentage is based on last filled limit orders it changes the number while keeping the total amount he has invested about the same.

If you were trying to inflate the perceived odds across multiple markets that indicate success of the administration on a limited per-market budget, you’d basically trade exactly like Brian

@SteveAcomb top notch trading.

@brianwang lmao wyd bro

https://www.challengergray.com/blog/federal-cuts-dominate-march-2025-total-275240-announced-job-cuts-216670-from-doge-actions/

@ChrisMillsc5f7 if you believe that report, it should be an incredibly bear-ish sign for this market. In a time period the report says there were 280k government job cuts, the FRED series this market is resolved on moved a grand total of…15k jobs.

@polymathematic Hm maybe FRED is net and the other numbers are gross? Obviously all sorts of orgs are cutting positions all time. And I note the issue is cjanhe in net numbersso I guess I got it wrong!

Key distinction is that the article/report describes these as “announced job cuts,” not realized ones, so they wouldn’t show up in the FRED data yet.

@SteveAcomb right. But that’s already priced in. You can see discussion below on how the cuts are supposed to show up in October, if I remember correctly. We’ll see! Personally, I’m happier to bet on Elon’s and Trump’s track record for announcing things that don’t ever end up happening.

This is trading substantially below Kalshi, fyi:

https://kalshi.com/markets/kxfedemployees/federal-government-employee-count

@bens It makes much more sense to hedge with real money than fake money. I wonder how much of the discrepancy that explains.