One of
Trump's first acts as President was to dash out an
executive order instituting a hiring freeze in the US federal government, over which he now reigns.
In practice, this solves nothing to do with the "size" of
government. The federal bureaucracy is given various tasks by Congress, and hires people to do those tasks. Absent a change in the tasks assigned -- which must come via Congress as well -- a "hiring freeze" simply requires that the same work be done, but with fewer people directly governmentally employed. Which means that the bureaucracies hire a bunch of private
contractors, actually at a much higher
cost.
But in this instance there is an
ironic twist.
I am by no means a
fan of Trump, but I know some people who are. In fact, I know a couple where they're such big fans that as soon as Trump was elected, they decided go work for him. Or in any event, to go work for the government which he'd be heading. So they applied for government jobs right away -- both of them -- and they went through all the processes and flew out to Washington DC to be interviewed and come mid-
January they both got offers. So they quit their old jobs and moved from their old home to a new DC apartment, and bought stuff and got all excited and prepared to start their new jobs at the end of the month. And then came the hiring freeze, which very explicitly included rescinding offers already made, but where the hiree hadn't started working yet.
And those jobs disappeared, as did all hope of any other opportunity in the same sphere. And their old jobs were not only gone, but suddenly the market for those fields was a lot more competitive, with a lot of other job seekers in similar shoes.
So they're not such big fans of Trump anymore, either.
It's been brought to my attention that the group most harmed by the hiring freeze is actually US military veterans (as were my friends here), who usually get all sorts of extra points when applying for any gov't job.