Most Americans oppose RIFs, but a good-government group says anti-layoff messaging needs to be improved

Based on focus groups, surveys and their own experiences, experts at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan non-profit that conducts research into the public’s perception of government, developed messaging recommendations for those opposed to the Trump administration’s cuts of federal employees that, they believe, will influence more people. 

“Since we started studying these issues five years ago, it's very clear that most people don't know what the federal government does for them, and that's even more critical now we're talking about things being cut,” said Lindsay Laferriere, the director of the Partnership’s “Rebuilding Trust in Government” initiative, during a Tuesday webinar. 

The webinar focused on survey data that the organization released on June 24 that found 51% of U.S. adults oppose the president’s layoffs of federal workers (37% support, 12% don’t know) and half are against funding cuts to agencies (38% support, 12% don’t know). These results largely align with recent polling from the Associated Press and Pew Research Center. 

There was a partisan split in responses, with Republicans being more likely to support the job cuts than Democrats. While 46% of independents were against the layoffs, 36% reported they didn’t know. 

The data came from a nationally representative poll of 800 U.S. adults performed between March 31 to April 6. The Partnership also conducted three focus groups in February respectively with Republicans, Democrats and “people who said they were not close followers of government news.” 

While a narrow majority of Americans are opposed to the governmentwide reductions in force, according to the data, the Partnership said people are more concerned about how the layoffs will affect them rather than federal employees themselves. 

“We found through our focus groups that there's not a lot of sympathy for civil servants losing their jobs. There's a lot of people who say ‘Well, that happens in the real world. It happens in the business world. So federal employees losing their jobs, that's just what happens,’” said senior research manager Paul Hitlin. “It’s beneficial to not necessarily focus on that element and to focus really on the impact of what those cuts will be.”

Still, Hitlin said there is value in highlighting individual government workers, which the Partnership has done with its long-running annual awards for outstanding federal employees. 

“What we found is that people, in a good way, often generalize. When they learn about a particular person who's done really great work, it makes them think ‘Oh, there are other people in the government who are doing great work,’” he said. 

Interestingly, however, knowing someone who works for the federal government does not seem to affect one’s support or opposition to the layoffs. 

“Whether or not someone knows a federal employee does not seem to be much of a factor in their views of the administration’s actions,” according to the survey report. “Of people who know a federal employee, 40% support the cuts while 56% oppose them. Roughly the same amount (41%) of those who do not know a federal employee support the cuts, although a slightly lower percentage of such people are in opposition at 49%.”

Additionally, 54% of respondents said they don’t know anyone personally impacted by the federal spending cuts and layoffs compared with 12% who said they were directly affected and 23% who said they know someone personally impacted. 

The Partnership also reported that backers of the Trump administration’s cuts mostly want to maintain a nonpartisan civil service, with 76% of respondents who supported the reductions agreeing that civil servants should be apolitical. 

“The people who are supporting these cuts are not supporting it because they want to see a politicized civil service,” Hitlin said. “That's not why they support it. It really is about cutting spending and waste and fraud.”

Trump has sought to bring more political appointees into government and make it easier to fire career civil servants in order to advance his agenda and “dismantle the deep state and reclaim our government from Washington corruption.”