President Donald Trump made the exaggerated claim that federal office space is “occupied by 4%” of federal workers to bolster his argument for dramatically downsizing the federal workforce and demanding that most workers return to the office full time.

In fact, more than half of the nearly 2.3 million federal workers are not even eligible to work from home at all, according to an Office of Management and Budget report released in August 2024. As of May of that year, among those eligible to telework for a portion of their hours, 61% of their working hours were spent in-person at assigned job sites. Only 228,000 — about 10% of the federal workforce — were entirely remote.

Since taking office, Trump has taken a hard line on the need for federal workers to return full time to the office, and he has criticized former President Joe Biden’s post-pandemic efforts to push federal workers back to the office. As with the private sector, many employees began working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.