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Maps: Where Do Federal Employees Work in America?
Federal agencies began unveiling their plans this week to further reduce their staffs in mass firings, as demanded by the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees have already accepted buyouts or been fired or laid off.
These maps are based on newly available data from payroll records and offer a glimpse of the federal government’s 2.3 million or so civilian workers in March 2024, before the recent cuts. They show employees based in every state and in thousands of cities and small towns across the country, far beyond Washington, D.C.
Veterans Affairs
The Department of Veterans Affairs — the largest agency in the federal civilian work force outside of the Department of Defense — employed more than 480,000 people as of March of last year. Its employees include physicians and nurses at the agency’s network of medical centers, as well as staff members who help veterans access a wide range of benefits. The Trump administration has pledged to eliminate up to 80,000 jobs.
Internal Revenue Service
Tax examiners and customer service representatives employed by the Internal Revenue Service report to regional offices across the country, including major centers in Memphis; Austin, Texas; and Ogden, Utah. The Trump administration has slashed its federal work force — once totaling nearly 100,000 — by 13 percent, and it could lose up to a third of its staff because of further buyouts and resignations.
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution’s staff comprises museum curators, archivists, animal keepers and security guards who work at its museums and research centers.
Health and Human Services
The Department of Health and Human Services employed more than 90,000 people in March of last year before the Trump administration dismissed about 24 percent of its work force. The department consists of thousands of scientists, public health officials, researchers, and food and drug inspectors working on a vast array of health-related concerns.
Agriculture
At the Natural Resources Conservation Service, soil conservation experts are distributed widely across the country to support the agriculture industry. The Forest Service, which manages about 193 million acres of public lands, employs wildland firefighters, archeologists and wildlife biologists stationed primarily in rural areas of the country.
Social Security Administration
The Trump administration’s cuts have already caused staffing shortages at field offices across the country, where remaining employees are facing longer lines and anxious recipients. The agency had more than 59,000 staff members as of March of last year.
Commerce
The Commerce Department encompasses a group of distinct bureaus that conduct research, forecast weather and gather data in locations across the country.
The U.S. Census Bureau is headquartered in Suitland, Md., and also maintains a significant presence in Jeffersonville, Ind., where it has its main processing center for mail and surveys. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s staff of engineers, physicists and chemists is primarily based in Gaithersburg, Md., and Boulder, Colo.
Interior
The Interior Department maintains a far-flung work force that staffs national parks, works with Native American tribes, manages the agency’s vast lands and conducts research.
The department manages over 400 million acres of federal lands, primarily under the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. These bureaus employ scientists, researchers, technical staff members and park rangers across their portfolio of lands.
NASA
NASA’s highly specialized work force is composed of engineers, astrophysicists and planetary scientists distributed across several major centers across the country, such as the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency had more than 18,000 employees as of March of last year.
Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security is one of the largest agencies by total employment with more than 222,000 employees as of March of last year. It does not reveal the specific locations of staff members in many of its more high-profile subagencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol. That said, several of the department’s other subagencies offer a window into how the nation’s security and safety apparatus is distributed across the country.
Energy
The Department of Energy’s work force is distributed across a network of field offices and laboratories across the country, such as Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. The department’s staff of chemical engineers, nuclear experts and computer scientists is divided into groups like the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Energy Information Administration.
Transportation
The Transportation Department encompasses a group of agencies that sets regulations for the aviation industry, railroads, highways and public transit. The Federal Aviation Administration, by far the largest agency within Transportation, with more than 45,000 employees as of March of last year, has employees at almost every airport in the United States, as well as technical operations in Oklahoma City and Atlantic City, N.J.
Securities and Exchange Commission
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s offices are concentrated in urban areas with a significant financial services sector, like New York, San Francisco and Chicago. The agency employs lawyers, accountants and compliance experts whose mandate is to regulate the securities industry.
About the data
Data shown in the maps is from the Office of Personnel Management and reflects employees whose locations were available in federal government payroll records as of March 2024. The data does not show federal government contractors. The records also do not include employees of the Postal Service, intelligence agencies, or several other excluded agencies.
Locations shown for workers are based on federal duty stations, which are used across the federal government to standardize location data. About 1.2 million records in the O.P.M. data included valid duty stations codes; the remaining portion, about 880,000 records, had redacted locations. Agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of Justice and Homeland Security did not share precise locations for most staff members.
Records with valid codes were matched to locations based on data from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. About 40,000 were not able to be matched, so they were joined to duty stations data from O.P.M. and then geocoded to the city or county level.
The maps show agencies and subagencies for which we were able to locate over 75 percent of its U.S.-based staff, based on the March 2024 O.P.M. data. The maps do not show employees who are based outside of the 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Numbers in the text of the article that reflect the total size of agencies and subagencies are from FedScope data as of March 2024.
Smoke rises over Konarak naval base in southern Iran on Sunday. The base was one of hundreds of targets of U.S. and Israeli forces throughout the country.
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Planet Labs PBC
Commercial satellite images are providing a unique look at the extent of damage being done to Iran’s military facilities across the country.
The U.S. and Israeli military campaign opened with a daytime attack that struck Iranian leadership in central Tehran. Smoke was still visible rising from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound following the attack that killed the supreme leader.
An image by the company Airbus taken on Saturday shows the aftermath of an Israeli strike on Iran’s Leadership House in central Tehran. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening wave of attacks.
Pléiades Neo (c) Airbus DS 2026
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Pléiades Neo (c) Airbus DS 2026
Israel and the U.S. have gone on to strike targets across the country. Reports on social media indicate that there have been numerous military bases and compounds attacked all over Iran, and Iran has responded with attacks throughout the Middle East.
U.S. forces have also been striking at Iran’s navy. In a post on his social media platform, President Trump said that he had been briefed that U.S. forces had sunk nine Iranian naval vessels. U.S. Central Command did not immediately confirm that number but it did say it had struck an Iranian warship in port.
An image captured on Saturday shows a ship burning at Iran’s naval base at Konarak.
Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
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Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
Numerous satellite images show burning vessels at Konarak naval base in southern Iran. Images also show damage to a nearby airbase where hardened hangers were struck by precision munitions.
Hardened aircraft shelters at Konarak airbase were struck with precision munitions.
Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
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Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
And there was extensive damage at a drone base in the same area. Iran has launched numerous drones and missiles toward Israel and U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Many drones have been intercepted but videos on social media show that some have evaded air defenses and caused damage in nearby Gulf countries. In Dubai, debris from an Iranian drone damaged the iconic Burj Al Arab, according to a statement from Dubai’s government.
Buildings at an Iranian drone base at Konarak were destroyed in the strikes.
Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
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Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
Iran’s most powerful weapons are its long-range missiles. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have hidden the missiles deep inside mountain tunnels. Images taken Sunday in the mountains of northern Iran indicate that some of those tunnels were hit in a wave of strikes.
Following Khamenei’s death, Iran declared 40 days of mourning. Satellite images showed mourners gathering in Tehran’s Enghelab square on Sunday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told NPR on Sunday that Iran will continue to fight “foreign aggression, foreign domination.”
A White House official told NPR that Trump plans to talk to Iran’s interim leadership “eventually,” but that for now, U.S. operations continue in the region “unabated.”
A large crowd of mourners fill Enghelab Square in Tehran on Sunday, following the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
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Satellite image ©2026 Vantor
new video loaded: What the Texas Primary Battle Means for the Midterms
By J. David Goodman, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, June Kim and Luke Piotrowski
March 1, 2026
Gunfire rang out at a bar in Austin, Texas, early Sunday and at least three people were killed, the city’s police chief said.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis told reporters the shooter was killed by officers at the scene.
Fourteen others were hospitalized and three were in critical condition, Austin-Travis County EMS Chief Robert Luckritz said.
“We received a call at 1:39 a.m. and within 57 seconds, the first paramedics and officers were on scene actively treating the patients,” Luckritz said.
There was no initial word on the shooter’s identity or motive.
Davis noted how fortunate it was that there was a heavy police presence in Austin’s entertainment district at the time, enabling officers to respond quickly as bars were closing.
“Officers immediately transitioned … and were faced with the individual with a gun,” Davis said. “Three of our officers returned fire, killing the suspect.”
She called the shooting a “tragic, tragic” incident.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said his heart goes out to the victims, and he praised the swift response of first responders.
“They definitely saved lives,” he said.
Davis said federal law enforcement is aiding the investigation.
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