Billionaire Elon Musk plans to push to enforce the return to a full workweek for all federal employees as he and other allies of President-elect Donald Trump look to slash government regulations and spending.
As one of the co-leaders of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, the Tesla CEO said work-from-home policies are a "privilege" born from the early days of the pandemic that have long since expired.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying home,” Musk and fellow Trump administration adviser Vivek Ramaswamy wrote in an opinion column this past week in the Wall Street Journal.
The in-office mandate would fit in with the department's broader plans to "dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies," according to the column.
The billionaire has already committed to cut at least $2 trillion from the annual U.S. budget and substantially shrink the number of government agencies.
Thinning the ranks
The five-day workweek requirement alone could result in a “25 percent thinning out of the federal bureaucracy," Ramaswamy recently said on a podcast with Tucker Carlson.
There are more than 2 million federal workers and upward of 400 agencies across the country. About 80% of federal employees work outside the Washington, D.C., area, according to the nonprofit organization Partnership for Public Service.
The elimination of the federal government's flexible work policy is far from certain, and Musk and Ramaswamy's comments have already sparked responses from government employee unions.
Even if they had remote-eligible roles, a report issued earlier this year by the Office of Management and Budget found that federal employees were still spending more than 60% of their work hours in offices. Of the 2.3 million civilian workers working for the government in May, the report said, more than 1.3 million were eligible for some form of flexible or remote work.
Earlier this year, more than 400,000 federal employees were required to be in the office two to three days per week, with 16 federal agencies rolling out return-to-office mandates, according to a report from brokerage JLL.
'A productivity thing'
A full return to the office among federal employees could be a significant boost to a D.C. office market that has been left reeling from the lingering impacts of the pandemic. Economic activity in the city’s downtown has plateaued at less than 70% of pre-pandemic levels, according to a recent Downtown DC Business Improvement District report.
Office vacancy rates have climbed to a record high of more than 17%, according to CoStar data. The central business district, which houses a number of government offices, is especially stressed, as its vacancy rate has climbed even higher to 19%, CoStar data shows.
Yet any effort to bring workers back may clash with the federal government's ongoing push to reduce its leased office footprint.
The federal government is the largest office tenant in the D.C. market. Some of its agencies plan to make cuts to office space in and around the District, according to a report by the Office of Management and Budget. That smaller federal footprint, driven in part by the rise of remote working and a focus on space use, could further challenge the D.C. office market recovery.
Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, has been a vocal opponent of remote work and has implemented strict in-office policies for all of his employees. He eliminated remote work for Tesla and SpaceX workers in 2022, ordering people back for a minimum of 40 hours per week.
“It’s not just a productivity thing, I think it’s morally wrong,” he last year told CNBC.