According to a recently released Senate report, the number of federal workers reporting to the office ”in-person on a full-time basis” is a dismal six percent and according to a post by Elon Musk on X, “If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!”
According to the report from Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) office, prior to the pandemic, only three percent of federal workers teleworked daily.
Ernst, who has been a consistent and vocal opponent to the rise of remote federal work, is planning on sharing her findings with the soon to be established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The duo plan to visit the Capitol on Dec. 5.
In the report, Ernst wrote, “The nation’s capital is a ghost town, with government buildings averaging an occupancy rate of 12[%],” and asking, “If federal employees can’t be found at their desks, exactly where are they?”
Ernst turned her sights on the president, Joe Biden, blasting the outgoing president for choosing to work from his home in Delaware as opposed to the White House.
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“President Biden is setting the example. He was out of office 532 days over the last three-and-a-half years about 40[%] of the time he was expected to be in the Oval Office,” she said.
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‘Open the Books’
The report was produced in collaboration with the non-profit group, Open the Books, which advocates for government transparency for taxpayers and “claims that the Biden administration redacted the ‘work locations of over 281,000 rank-and-file federal employees,’” the New York Post reported.
The report states that taxpayers pay an astonishing $15.7 billion every year for leasing and maintenance costs for federal buildings, buildings that mostly remain empty.
In total, the U.S. government owns 7,697 vacant buildings with another 2,265 being “somewhat empty,” according to the report.
The report lists the James V Forrestal building, which is supposed to be occupied by employees of the Department of Energy, being utilized zero percent of the time.
The building’s usable square footage is 967,674 square feet and is intended to house over 4,800 office workers.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture building, the Agriculture South & Whitten building, which sprawls over 1.48 million usable square feet and provides workspace for around 7,400 employees, has an utilization rate of about six percent.
The utilization rates are based on 200 usable square feet per occupant, the report says.
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‘Taxpayers are getting ripped off’
Ernst says that “taxpayers are getting ripped off” and argues that her constituents are being provided poor service as a result, citing government departments like the Social Security Administration and the Food and Drug Administration being problematic and unresponsive.
The report provides a number of scenarios where federal employees have dropped the ball.
“She cited an example of a whistleblower report at the FDA that was unread for months warning about bacteria spreading in baby formula, which ultimately culminated in a national shortage back in 2022,” The New York Post reported.
Another example involves a Department of Veterans Affairs Manager in Atlanta who took a picture of himself “working” while in a bubble bath. The photo caused a stir at the time.
Per the report, a federal worker who attends the office regularly said “he is one of few who reports to the Washington, DC, office, and contractors have commented to him about the whereabouts of agency employees.”
The report found that a number of federal employees may be committing fraud.
“My audits are finding as many as 23[%] to 68[%] of teleworking employees for some agencies are boosting their salaries by receiving incorrect locality pay. Some employees live more than 2,000 miles away from their office and one ‘temporary’ teleworker collected higher locality pay for nearly a decade,” the report found.
Ernst will have the opportunity to address the issue. Last month, it was announced that she will be the chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, and will collaborate with the nongovernmental agency to address the supposed government bloat and inefficiency.
