Reforming the Civil Service: Impacts on Engagement, Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover Intentions

This paper evaluates the causal impact of the 2025 U.S. federal personnel reforms on employment, employee engagement, job satisfaction, burnout, job search behavior, and perceptions about their workplace. Using administrative and survey data, we implement a differencein-differences design comparing federal employees to observationally similar state-and local government employees before and after the reforms. Event-study estimates show near-parallel pre-trends (2022-2024) and a sharp post-reform divergence in 2025. Baseline estimates indicate a meaningful decline in federal employment and employee engagement relative to the state control group, accompanied by reductions in job satisfaction and corresponding increases in reported burnout and job search activity. Heterogeneity analyses show that these effects are driven almost entirely by federal workers who identify as Democrats, and to some extent Independents, with little to no impact on their Republican colleagues. We also find that perceptions of workplace practices, like trust in leadership, play a moderating role.