Linked to this Kalshi question:
If there are more than 250000 federal employees no longer working relative to the January 2025 employee count before Jan 2026, then the market resolves to Yes. Outcome verified from FRED.
Note the resolution criteria—what matters is the change in the count of federal employees, not whether we can confirm Trump and/or Elon directly fired them. For reference, the specific chart Kalshi links to appears to be this one.
@jb456 people can bet on the data as they’d like but keep in mind that tbe survey period doesn’t cover much of the major recent DOGE layoffs. So the Feb data can only tell us a limited amount

this is the behavior of someone willing to take a loss in order to manage public perception
@NicoMach and then bought fewer of the more expensive shares back up to 67, yeah 🤣
it loses him mana, but because the percentage is based on last filled limit orders it changes the number while keeping the total amount he has invested about the same.
If you were trying to inflate the perceived odds across multiple markets that indicate success of the administration on a limited per-market budget, you’d basically trade exactly like Brian
@ChrisMillsc5f7 if you believe that report, it should be an incredibly bear-ish sign for this market. In a time period the report says there were 280k government job cuts, the FRED series this market is resolved on moved a grand total of…15k jobs.
@polymathematic Hm maybe FRED is net and the other numbers are gross? Obviously all sorts of orgs are cutting positions all time. And I note the issue is cjanhe in net numbersso I guess I got it wrong!
Key distinction is that the article/report describes these as “announced job cuts,” not realized ones, so they wouldn’t show up in the FRED data yet.
@SteveAcomb right. But that’s already priced in. You can see discussion below on how the cuts are supposed to show up in October, if I remember correctly. We’ll see! Personally, I’m happier to bet on Elon’s and Trump’s track record for announcing things that don’t ever end up happening.
This is trading substantially below Kalshi, fyi:
https://kalshi.com/markets/kxfedemployees/federal-government-employee-count
March jobs data: Number of federal employees is 300k. January total appears to have been revised to 315k. Extrapolation of the linear trend to a year would suggest total cuts of 90k federal employees.
The usual caveats apply about the survey date being in the middle rather than the end of the month.
-deleted due to embarrassing mistake-
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-doge-civilian-job-cuts-fbcb154fbe9d5904f456aa3655e57c44
Roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the Defense Department, but fewer than 21,000 workers who took a voluntary resignation plan are leaving in the coming months, a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday.
To reach the goal of a 5% to 8% cut in a civilian workforce of more than 900,000, the official said the department aims to slash about 6,000 positions a month by simply not replacing workers who routinely leave.
This alone is a pretty big chunk of what’s needed