On March 3, Elon Musk, who has been leading the efforts at DOGE, posted on a social media platform that the Fed was “absurdly overstaffed.” Musk has reportedly sought to reduce federal government spending under President Trump. Fed Chair Jerome Powell countered Musk’s claims during a congressional hearing by stating that Fed employees were overworked — instead of overstaffed — and that “[e]verybody at the Fed works really hard.”
In the Fed’s 2023 Annual Report to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Fed noted it employed around 24,000 people, and its operations were governed by the Federal Reserve Act which granted the Fed the authority to manage its staffing independently of the civil-service system. Despite not being funded through the congressional budgetary process, the Fed faced a budget deficit in 2023 resulting from rising interest expenses on bank reserves.
