President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s purge of the federal workforce—intended to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, mass deportations and war—could leave up to 1 million people jobless in the coming weeks, according to a recent report from a major investment firm.

On February 22, Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Sløk, in a report titled Downside Risks Intensifying, wrote that the “consensus expects total DOGE-related job cuts to be 300,000.” He noted that unemployment claims were already rising in Washington, D.C., and stated that any further layoffs “will push jobless claims higher over the coming weeks.”

Citing a 2020 Brookings Institution report, Sløk observed “that for every federal employee, there are two contractors. As a result, layoffs could potentially be closer to 1 million.”

On Thursday, Federal Judge William Alsup temporarily blocked some of the mass firings, ruling that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) exceeded its authority by ordering agencies such as the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fire workers.

Earlier this month, OPM issued a memo instructing federal agencies to “separate probationary employees that you have not identified as mission-critical no later than the end of the day Monday, 2/17.”

To make the job and spending cuts permanent and bypass legal challenges like Alsup’s ruling, Politico reported Thursday, Trump and top Republicans are considering “codifying DOGE actions” into the upcoming spending bill. The current proposal includes $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and other healthcare programs over 10 years.

In order to pressure Democrats into voting for the bill, Politico reported, Republicans would include alleged “egregious” examples of spending largess discovered by DOGE and “dare” Democrats to vote against it. Despite constant claims of “waste, fraud and abuse” being discovered by Musk and his DOGE cronies, no one has been charged with fraud.

Without a spending bill or continuing resolution by March 14, the federal government will shut down. On Thursday, Trump posted on social media that Congress was working to “pass a clean, temporary government funding Bill (‘CR’). Let’s get it done!”

With a shutdown looming, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that additional federal layoffs are imminent, with some departments facing cuts of up to 90 percent. Two Social Security Administration workers said agency leadership has been instructed to cut staff “by half.”

An internal Department of Labor memorandum viewed by the Post calls for slashing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program from 50 offices and nearly 500 workers to just four offices and 50 people.

Wired reported on February 25 that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is updating software previously developed by the Department of Defense to cull federal workers. Sources told Wired that the software, called AutoRIF, or “Automated Reduction in Force,” has been accessed by DOGE operatives, who “appear to be editing its code,” according to “screenshots of internal databases” provided by sources.

During his first full cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump said he spoke with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Secretary Lee Zeldin, “and [Zeldin] thinks he’s going to be cutting 65 percent or so of the people from environmental, and we’re going to speed up the process too.” The White House later attempted to walk back the statement, claiming that Trump was committed to “eliminating 65 percent of the EPA’s wasteful spending.”

Of course, for the financial oligarchy, “wasteful spending” is anything that benefits the lives, health and safety of the working class at the expense of Wall Street profits. A currently employed lawyer with the EPA told reporters for the World Socialist Web Site:

The folks with the most experience at the EPA are currently leaving (many during this exact pay period), and the first wave of probationary firings has already left the agency understaffed.

We are unable to continue past the projects we have entered on currently; to cull any more would leave us categorically unable to finish the tasks currently set. When they attack grants, people here suffer today; when they attack USAID, people abroad die today; when they attack Medicaid, people die tomorrow; when they attack EPA, children die decades from now.

He concluded that “the loss is incalculable and the message is clear: They would kill you for a red cent, and they will pay no price unless working people actually take a stand on every one of these issues.”

In devastating cuts that climate scientists and meteorologists warn will lead to deaths, hundreds of workers—including new-hires and recently promoted staff—were fired at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the Department of Commerce, on Thursday. The Guardian reported that roughly 10 percent of the agency’s workforce was classified as “probationary” and subject to layoffs.

In a thread on X, Dr. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, called the firings of “new-hires and recently promoted senior staff… profoundly alarming.” He noted that those dismissed appeared to include “meteorologists, data scientists responsible for maintaining weather predictive models, and technicians responsible for maintaining the nation’s weather instrumentation network (among many others).”

Swain emphasized that the National Weather Service (NWS) “saves countless lives by issuing high-quality weather forecasts and extreme weather warnings.” He added:

Despite widespread discussion to the contrary, the fact of the matter is that the private sector, as it presently exists, simply cannot quickly spin up to fill any void left by substantial dismantling of NOAA and/or the NWS.

“In fact,” Swain wrote, “though this is not widely known, most or all private weather companies in the US (including the forecasts you see on TV or your favorite app) are built directly atop the backbone of taxpayer-funded instrumentation, data, predictive modeling, and forecasts provided by NOAA.”

He concluded that the large staffing reductions underway, with more cuts on the horizon, will result in “people who die in extreme weather events and related disasters who would not have otherwise.”