A Washington Post story about the cruelty of federal government firings includes only a single fired worker. A two month probationary worker.

From White House officials wanted to put federal workers 'in trauma.'  Its working.  by William Wan and Hannah Natanson.

The subheading is Federal workers describe struggling with panic attacks, depression, suicidal thoughts. “Why doesn’t anyone care?”

Almost a trope.  The Washington Post has long been known for emo-reporting in which the writing hides the weakness of their data and argument.  I have used them for case studies of bad arguments for years.  While the article appears to be deliberate propaganda for political purposes, I think it is actually an institutional and professional quirk.  It seems to be how journalists are trained today.  Exacerbated by notorious innumeracy within the profession.  One of the two reporters even fits Ben Rhodes' description of journalists:

"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Hannah Natanson is 27 years old, seemingly Washington, DC born and raised, DC prep-school and Harvard educated, prior work experience with the federal government.  Hard to imagine anyone more distant from the real world.  But maybe I am being unfair.  

I stipulate that downsizings and reductions in force (RIF) are traumatizing to some people.  Virtually every major sector - automotive, banking, real estate, telecomm, mining, energy, construction, legal, etc. goes through an industry contraction with some periodicity.  It is always wrenching for everyone and there are always tragedies associated with such changes.  But they are as routine as they are inescapable.  

About 40% of workers can anticipate being fired at least once in their work life.  The average worker changes jobs twelve times in their work life, once every four years or so, not infrequently just ahead of an easily anticipated RIF.  All such changes are potentially challenging.  

While Wan and Natanson try and make this federal government reduction in force a grossly unique event, their own reporting indicates that it is not.  And with even a modicum of knowledge, you can come up with other examples.  The American military went from 2 million in 1990 to 1.5 million in 1995.  I was subscribing to the Washington Post back then and my recollection was that there were few or no articles about the cruel trauma of such RIFs but rather a celebration of what an economic opportunity there was for the nation to no longer be paying for that burden of defense.  

Separate from the military reductions owing to the winning of the Cold War, there was an even bigger RIF under Clinton in the civilian federal employees.  In the 1990's the Reinventing Government program drove major reductions.  

Over the span of seven years, the program eliminated roughly 400,000 federal jobs — a 17 percent cut — mostly through voluntary buyouts and attrition.

As always, it is the numbers which trip up the reporters and which the reader trips over when reading.  They start with an emo story and then the numbers simply get in the way.

In the article we learn that:

There are 2.4 million federal employees

There has so far been a 6% reduction in federal employee headcount

This equates to 130,000 job reductions

Of which 76,000 were voluntary buyouts

And only 50,000 were non-voluntary RIF

50,000 people is real and difficult but it is also routine across industries and sectors.  There is not much out of the ordinary.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 1.5 and 1.8 million people lose a job each month.  3.5 million have lost jobs in 2025 so far.  Further, also BLS, 4.2% or 7.2 million Americans are unemployed and seeking work.

Yes, losing a job and looking for work are stressful events.  And it is entirely ordinary.  Most people experience stress associated with job uncertainty much of the time.  50,000 federal employees were fired in the first four months of the year compared to 3.5 million in the entire workforce.  1.4% of those fired in 2025 have been federal civilian employees.  Notably, federal civilian employees are 1.9% of the entire civilian workforce.  Despite, what Wan and Natanson are trying to convey, federal civilian employees are suffering a lower rate of job loss than their counterparts in the private sector.  About the same if you choose to include those who voluntarily chose to accept buy-outs.  

Once you start paying attention to the numbers, you also notice how unrepresentative is the article.  The two reporters claim that they conducted more than 30 interviews and that "roughly a third" of those interviewed were fired.  

However, when you track through the article itself, there is only evidence of seven people being interviewed.  Astoundingly, only one of the persons quoted in the article was actually fired.  He had worked for the federal government for two months.  

They interviewed ten people who were fired and a probationary employee with two months on the job was the most sympathetic and effective story in support of their argument.  It seems impossible but . . . imagine the other nine.  

Of course not everyone interviewed would be included and not everyone would necessarily be fired.  But two reporters, front page, 4,500 words and only one firing?  The whole article is a criticism of the administration's downsizing and firings and they only interview one person who was fired from a probationary job?  Astounding.  What's going on?  Things are simply not adding up.

So I go back and read more carefully.  There are a lot of moving vignettes, but how many people are named and how many are anonymously referenced?  Three people named and four people anonymously referenced as best I can tell.  

Caitlin Cross-Barnet, 55 - Worked for the federal government for 12 years, pre-existing mental health.  Suicidal ideation.  Pre-existing health and family problems.  Was committed to a facility and committed suicide.  Female

Richard Midgette, 28 - Worked for the federal government for 2 months, fired.  Male

Monique Lockett, 53 - Unknown how long she worked for the federal government.  Pre-existing health conditions (morbid obesity.)  Died from a heart attack attributed by friends to the stress of the work environment.  Female

 

A manager in the Midwest for the Department of Veterans Affairs - Pre-existing mental health (on antidepressant medications)   Female

A National Institutes of Health employee in the South - Worked for the federal government for "Several years." Pre-existing mental health, bi-polar with suicidal ideation.  Female

U.S. Forest Service biologist in California - 15 years, experienced panic attacks. Male

Grieving colleague at HHS - suicidal ideation because her husband lost his contract job.  Female

When you start looking at this, patterns appear.  And you have to be careful because with only seven cases, nothing is statistically meaningful and this is entirely hostage to cherry-picking or deliberate choice of cases, especially if they interviewed more than thirty people.  These were the most sympathetic cases they had to choose from?  The most relevant to the argument they are trying to make that the Trump administration is doing something unusual and cruel?  

Only two of the seven cases involve males.  45% of the federal workforce is female but 71% of the cases the reporters chose for their article were female.  And even though in their own reporting, men suffer 70% more suicides related to job loss.

In 2011, economists examined a decade of data and found that mass layoffs resulted in an additional suicide for every 4,200 men and for every 7,100 women losing their jobs. Mass layoffs can devastate entire communities, they noted, fracturing social networks and creating pools of applicants fighting over limited jobs.

Another pattern - four of the seven (57%) had preexisting health and mental health conditions and were already being treated.  

The article has too few cases, disproportionately female, disproportionately poor mental and physical health, only one interviewee fired, one death from suicide due to pre-existing mental health issues and life stress (family health and issues) and one death from heart attack.  

For an article that reads as dramatically effective at making the argument that Trump's is a cruel and unusual administration, the actual information they report (as well as information readily available from memory or search) undermines their case completely.

Based on their numbers, federal civilian employees suffer like everyone else from layoffs but are less likely to be fired than are other civilian employees.  

All the emo?  Why.  

Then you notice the note at the bottom of the article.  

Aaron Schaffer and Alice Crites contributed to this report. To reconstruct the last days of Caitlin Cross-Barnet and Monique Lockett, the reporters interviewed more than 20 relatives, co-workers and friends and reviewed phone records, police reports, medical records and death certificates. The Post spoke to Kat Brekken to corroborate the scene at the bridge.

So four reporters not two.  Twenty of the "more than thirty" interviews were with relatives, co-workers and friends of just two people.  

Things seem to come into focus.

The cruelest summary is that this is actually an article about a suicidal woman who committed suicide and a morbidly obese woman who died from heart failure; both being civilian employees of the federal government who were also anxious about their job environment but who were not fired nor even under immediate threat of being fired.  

Death is a tragedy and the human side of this cannot be ignored.  But it is the reporters, or their editors, who seem to be making the effort to make these cases into something they are not.  RIFs are hard.  They are tragic for a few.  Job loss affects a plurality of people.  Job insecurity affects everyone.  Virtually everyone experiences multiple job transitions in their lifetime that are not sought but fall short of a firing.  

It feels like the sad case of Caitlin Cross-Barnet was the instigating article and that somewhere along the line, the article morphed into an argument far larger than the facts could support.

If I had to guess, I suspect the reporters got wind of Caitlin Cross-Barnet's death and saw that as a hook for an article about the cruel consequences of Trump's reductions in the federal civilian workforce.  But once they discovered that she had multiple pre-existing mental health, physical health, and family issues, they found themselves without the forceful argument they needed.  They came across the tragic death of Monique Lockett but it also wasn't really pertinent to their argument.  Eventually they put a full court press and rounded up some people who could be reported as being stressed and upset by their federal work environment.  

And at that point the editors probably pulled the plug.  Four reporters and who knows how many hours of research and writing and all they have to support the critical edifice of their argument is a single fired employee from a two month probationary job.  The end result is a tribute to emo writing that feels like propaganda because the underlying facts do not support the argument they wanted to make at the beginning.  

We end up, after careful reading, with a long, heavily reported Washington Post story about the cruelty and unusualness of federal government firings which includes only a single fired worker.  A two month probationary worker.

Which is the pattern for all Washington Post and New York Times emo reporting.  They want to tell a heart wrenching story of tragedy and unfairness, often with a political attack slant to it, but the details and the numbers almost never support the story they want to tell.  

I don't know why they keep doing it, I just see that they do.