WASHINGTON — Workers in the nation’s capital are twice as likely to head into the office, rather than work from home, compared to the rest of the country, according to new data — and it is all thanks to President Trump.
Trump’s executive order targeting federal workers getting back into the office has skyrocketed the number of employees working on-site.
The number of federal workers in DC who are in the office full-time stands at 46%, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. That number is more than double the 17% who were working on-site at the end of 2024.
The percentage of hybrid workers, who work remotely and on-site, also dropped from 61% to 28% in the same timeframe.
Trump implemented an executive order on the first day of his term, Jan. 20, stating that most federal workers have to return to work “as soon as practicable.”
“Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary,” his EO stated.
The order was met with resistance from federal workers who had moved away from their office space in the years after the pandemic and were accustomed to having a remote or hybrid model.
However, the trend in DC doesn’t reflect the rest of the country.
Nationwide, just 21% of workers are heading back to the office full-time, the Gallup data show. This is a far cry from the 60% of people who were on-site before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead, hybrid workers now make up the majority of employment models in the US, with 51% of employees choosing to work a mix of remote and on-site.
The number of exclusively remote workers nationwide, meanwhile, has dipped from a peak of 70% in May 2020 to 28% in May 2025.
Trump’s reason for bringing workers back to the office was to have more oversight on what was being completed by the taxpayer-funded employees.
A government watchdog analyzed data at the beginning of Trump’s term to find that workers had “rampant telework abuse” during President Joe Biden’s era.
“That era of telework abuse is over,” OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement.
“At President Trumpʼs direction, OPM has restored in-person operations to ensure federal employees are working for the taxpayers.”
