I lined up outside Costco to buy eggs right when it opened. They were gone in 8 minutes.

Shoppers lined up outside Costco.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

• Egg prices have reached record highs due to egg supply issues amid a bird flu outbreak in the US.
• Some stores are imposing limits on how many eggs shoppers can buy.
• I lined up at Costco to buy eggs right when the store opened, and they sold out in minutes.

Egg supply issues in the US amid a bird flu outbreak have pushed prices to record highs and made it difficult for stores to keep cartons stocked on shelves.

In a survey conducted by Numerator, a market research firm, over half of shoppers said they'd seen shortages of eggs or found them out-of-stock at stores, including BJ's, Costco, Target, Trader Joe's, and Publix.

I visited a Costco store in New York City to see firsthand how consumers navigate egg supply issues and price hikes. Here's a play-by-play of how I managed to get one of the last cartons in the store.

9:29 a.m. — I arrived at Costco about 30 minutes before the store opened.

Costco in New York City.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

Manhattan's only Costco store is located at East River Plaza, a shopping complex in East Harlem.

I often have to circle the parking lot and wait for a spot when I make my usual Costco runs on Sunday afternoons, but I had no trouble finding a place to park that early.

9:34 a.m. — I spoke to a few shoppers who said they'd had trouble finding eggs in grocery stores.

Shoppers waited for the store to open.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

Some people I spoke with said they hadn't arrived early to buy eggs but instead preferred to shop when the store was less crowded. They also said morning grocery trips worked best with their busy schedules.

When asked why they were at the store so early, two people said they'd had trouble finding eggs at other stores and had come to Costco in search of an affordable supply.

"People don't want to overpay for eggs," one shopper, who declined to give his name, told Business Insider. "That's why I stock up on them."

"It's a shame. It's a shame how much eggs cost," another shopper who asked not to be identified said.

9:55 a.m. — A Costco employee came around to scan membership cards.

A Costco employee scanned membership cards.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I noticed scanning membership cards beforehand allowed for better traffic flow once the doors opened.

9:58 a.m. — The crowd grew as more people arrived and lined up to enter the store.

Shoppers lined up outside Costco.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

Crowds gathered outside the store by the parking lot and in the indoor vestibule leading to the warehouse entrance. I estimated that there were around 30 to 40 people between them.

10:01 a.m. — The doors opened.

Entering Costco at 10:01 a.m.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

It took some maneuvering for all the people and carts to fit through the doors, but overall, I found the process orderly and efficient.

Some people stopped at the entrance to scan their cards again, but employees waved them through and said that wasn't necessary if they'd been processed outside.

10:02 a.m. — I marveled at the mostly empty aisles in what's normally a crowded store.

Costco at its opening time.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I've shopped at Costco stores in the Midwest and Iceland. The busiest location is Costco in New York City. I'd never seen the aisles look so spacious.

10:03 a.m. — It seemed like everyone had the same destination in mind — the dairy, milk, and eggs refrigerated section.

The dairy, milk, and eggs section at Costco.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I figured it was best to head straight there just in case the eggs went quickly.

10:04 a.m. — Success! There were still about 20 cartons left, each with two dozen Kirkland Signature large cage-free eggs.

Eggs at Costco at 10:04 a.m.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I was surprised to find that there weren't any sets of five dozen cage-free eggs for sale, only smaller cartons with two dozen eggs.

A Costco employee told me that egg deliveries have been inconsistent and that the store's stock varies daily.

Since the Manhattan location hadn't received any eggs that morning, the cartons in stock were likely leftover from closing the day before, the employee said.

10:05 a.m. — I grabbed two cartons of eggs, one for myself and one for my neighbors, who asked me to get one for them.

Costco eggs in my shopping cart.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

My neighbors and I occasionally pick up items from Costco for each other. They bought me some cheese on their latest shopping trip, so I owed them a favor.

10:07 a.m. — The egg supply dwindled.

The supply of eggs at 10:07 a.m.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I stayed in the refrigerated section to see how long it would take for the eggs to sell out.

10:08 a.m. — Just eight minutes after Costco opened, all of the eggs were gone.

No more eggs.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I watched several shoppers, who had also arrived early, walk into the refrigerated section. They seemed to express disappointment after seeing the eggs were sold out.

10:12 a.m. — I looked around to see if Costco had posted any signs limiting egg purchases, but the Manhattan location didn't appear to have any.

The price of eggs at Costco in February 2025.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

I saw one person with six packages of eggs in their cart, but for the most part, shoppers took one or two cartons each when I was in the store.

Some Costco locations have limited customers to three egg cartons per person, but policies appear to vary by store. Costco representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

10:31 a.m. — I paid $8.49 per carton, which was around $4.25 per dozen.

Self-checkout at Costco.

Talia Lakritz/Business Insider

The average price of a dozen large eggs in US cities was $4.95 as of January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Costco's price during my visit was 70 cents lower than the national average.

In my experience, Manhattan's Costco usually has a small line of people waiting outside before it opens, but this shopping trip felt different. The strategic planning required to buy a carton of eggs reminded me of the frantic rush of securing Taylor Swift's Eras Tour tickets.

In this economy, eggs no longer feel like a basic grocery staple. They're a hot luxury item that flies off the shelves, available to the most devoted fans.

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Inside the mile-long factory line where America's F-35 stealth fighter jets are made

Three US Air Force F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters.

US Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Madelyn Brown

• Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II is one of the world's most advanced fighter jets.
• Business Insider toured a facility where the stealth jet is made.
• The production line in Fort Worth, Texas, is cranking out over 150 aircraft a year.

In a sprawling factory in Texas, thousands of people are working around the clock to assemble the US military's most advanced multi-role fighter jet: the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.

The facility, operated by defense giant Lockheed Martin, stretches more than a mile and cranks out over 150 aircraft a year. It's enormous, with people riding golf carts or bikes to travel from one end to the other.

Business Insider recently toured the factory, officially called Air Force Plant 4. An overhead view of the production line, looking from right to left, reveals the tremendous scale of the operation. F-35s can be seen going from just the bare bones — chunks of metal largely unrecognizable to the untrained eye — to a jet that's nearly in its final form: a single-engine, supersonic stealth fighter jet made to dominate a range of combat operations.

The F-35 is the world's most expensive weapons program, with an expected lifetime cost of more than $2 trillion. Elon Musk and others have sharply criticized the aircraft amid rising program costs, sustainability challenges, and developmental setbacks. However, it is constantly being upgraded and is widely recognized as a top fifth-generation fighter.

Lockheed says that production of the jet contributes roughly $72 billion annually to the US economy through its network of suppliers and hundreds of thousands of workers spread across the country.

It takes about a year and a half to build a new F-35

Air Force Plant 4 has been making warplanes for decades. It began producing bomber aircraft during World War II before transitioning to the now-retired F-111 Aardvark in the 1960s. Several years later, it started building F-16s.

A view of the F-35 production line in Fort Worth, Texas.

Courtesy of Lockheed Martin

The first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter rolled off the factory floor in 2006, and since then, more than 1,110 of these fighter jets have been delivered to the US and its allies.

After significant delays, the F-35 program last year achieved full-rate production.

A single F-35 takes around 18 months to build, and this production facility can turn out 156 fighters annually from across all three variants — the A, B, and C variants are designed for conventional and ship-based take-off and landing. It is a 24-hour-a-day operation, with thousands of workers moving in and out of the plant on any given day, surrounded by heavy machinery.

Another view of the F-35 production facility.

Courtesy of Lockheed Martin

Building the fighter jet starts with the assembly of its wing section. Constructing the airframe then moves down the production line to an area where the four major structure pieces of the jet — the tail section, wings, center fuselage, and forward fuselage — are brought together.

Maintaining a steady parts supply is a big challenge

This is where the aircraft really starts to take its highly recognizable shape. Small screens next to the aircraft show which country it's being made for: a stroll down the production line reveals the US, UK, Poland, Israel, and Japan, to name a few.

Another angle showing the F-35 production line.

Courtesy of Lockheed Martin

Parts for the F-35 — of which there are thousands — come from all over the world because the jet is a multinational project. One of the biggest challenges with building the fighter, BI learned, is ensuring that an adequate supply of parts is flowing to the Fort Worth production site.

When the fighters reach the end of the production line, they are ready to be painted their signature gray color. The paint, according to the company, is designed to reduce and absorb radar signals, which contributes to the aircraft's stealth profile.

The painting process happens in a separate building equipped with hangers that can close off during the coloring process. Some automation is involved in the construction of an F-35 jet, including when building its wing structure and during the painting stage.

A completed US Air Force F-35 is seen during an air show in February 2023.

AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

Every aircraft is then flown several times as part of testing before it is ready to be sold.

The largest F-35 final assembly facility is in Fort Worth, but there is one smaller plant in Italy and another in Japan. These sites underline the global nature of the operation, as planes are shipped off to militaries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

The F-35 has been used in combat since its first flight nearly 20 years ago. The US military has flown all three variants in strike missions against terror groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. The jet also received significant praise after Israel used it to carry out widespread airstrikes in Iran last fall.

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A boomer made $47,000 last year from his remote side hustle answering questions about art and antiques

David C. Bond made $47,000 last year answering questions about art and antiques on JustAnswer.

David C. Bond

• David C. Bond earned $47,000 last year answering questions about art on the platform JustAnswer.
• He gets paid between $7.50 and $11.50 per question and aims to answer about 20 per day.
• Freelance gigs like JustAnswer have become popular as people look for additional income.

While David C. Bond develops a longer-term career project, he's doing gig work that taps his expertise in art.

Since early 2023, Bond has worked for JustAnswer, a platform that connects users with questions to experts who can try to help. Many of the questions he answers are about the value and authenticity of art and antiques. In 2023, he earned almost $43,000, and last year, he earned a little over $47,000. He said the gig is a lot of work and that it's been difficult to grow his earnings, but that it's provided a valuable income stream.

"JustAnswer is simultaneously fun and frustrating," Bond, 61, told Business Insider.

Over the last two years, Bond has been paid between $7.50 and $11.50 per question, a rate that is set by the platform. Bond said fluctuations in his pay rate — and the lack of pay rate growth over time — have been frustrating.

JustAnswer told Business Insider that payouts vary by factors including geography, field, prior success in helping customers, and supply and demand.

Bond is among the many Americans who have recently turned to freelance gigs to boost their incomes. In the last few years, rising prices have weighed on many people's wallets, and a hiring slowdown has made it difficult for many individuals to find work or switch to a higher-paying job. As a result, some people have turned to gigs like Uber and DoorDash to help pay the bills, while others found freelance work that doesn't require them to leave their homes — including reselling and taking online surveys.

Answering questions can be a full-time job

Before joining JustAnswer, Bond worked as an estate processor in the art department of the auction house Freeman's | Hindman. After that, he and his wife owned a hair salon that also sold art. They sold the business in 2015 and moved from Philadelphia to Seattle to be closer to Bond's family.

Becoming an expert on JustAnswer is a multi-step process, the company told BI. After submitting an application, a person's credentials are reviewed and submitted to a third-party verification company for authentication. Bond said he had to contact Freeman's | Hindman — where he hadn't worked in more than a decade — to confirm his prior employment there.

Once approved, a candidate is placed on a waitlist until the platform's activation team determines they are needed, based on factors including customer interest. For Bond, the entire application process took a few weeks.

Bond estimated that he spends roughly six hours a day, six days a week, answering people's questions — his goal is to answer 15 to 20 questions a day. He said most of his time is spent reviewing how much similar art or antiques have sold for, sharing these comparables with customers, and then providing an estimate of a piece's value using the comparables and his expertise.

He receives a wide range of questions about art and antiques, but he said his customers typically fit one of two categories: people who have inherited something and "treasure hunters." Both groups are looking for insight into whether they have something of value.

"I have to tell them what it is and how much I think it's worth on the secondary market and everything in between," he said.

To use JustAnswer, customers must sign up for a monthly membership, which includes a roughly $5 one-time joining fee and a fee that ranges between $30 to $125 a month, depending on the type of expert they're seeking.

To be sure, Bond said he regularly hears from customers who are surprised they were charged for their questions or enrolled in a monthly membership to the platform. What's more, there are hundreds of complaints on the Better Bureau Business website, many of which are related to the company's membership program.

JustAnswer told BI via email that customers are asked to enter their credit card information before they receive an answer to their question — and are provided clear details about the platform's monthly cost and cancellation policy.

In the age of AI tools like ChatGPT, Bond thinks his expertise still has value.

"A 17th-century Japanese plate looks the same as a 20th-century reproduction to a machine, but I can look at it and see characteristics that make one different than the other," he said.

Have you used JustAnswer or another side hustle to boost your income? Reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.

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Why Target is more exposed to Trump's tariffs than Walmart

Walmart and Target have a few key distinctions that could significantly affect how each company is affected by rising import costs.

Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

• As America's grocery king, Walmart sources a high share of its products from within the US.
• Target, by contrast, relies more on merchandise that is often imported, such as apparel and housewares.
• The difference puts more of Target's business at risk from Trump's promised tariffs.

For all their similarities, Walmart and Target have key distinctions that could spell big differences in how each could be affected by rising import costs as President Donald Trump introduces new tariffs.

In a recent research note, Truist Securities analyst Scot Ciccarelli said Walmart is better positioned to deal with new tariffs than Target, especially since inflation-weary shoppers are likely to be more sensitive to price hikes.

While some of the new tariff costs could be passed on to customers via higher prices, Ciccarelli said retailers are more likely to put pressure on their vendors to absorb some of the pressure.

As the largest retailer in the world, Walmart has shown itself to be particularly effective at negotiating favorable deals from its suppliers.

And if retailers do wind up raising prices, that could tilt in Walmart's favor.

"Higher costs via tariffs would likely further accelerate the consumer search for 'deep value,' and further increase the wallet share for top value providers, including Walmart," Ciccarelli said.

The differences go beyond the price tags. Where a product comes from is increasingly important in the new trade landscape.

"Target is actually much more exposed than Walmart because Walmart is grocery-heavy and groceries are predominantly domestic," Jason Miller, supply chain professor at Michigan State University, told Business Insider.

As America's grocery king, Walmart US makes nearly 60% of its revenue from the grocery category and only about a quarter of sales from general merchandise.

In addition, grocery as a share of sales has been increasing in recent years as the general merchandise share has declined, according to Walmart's annual report.

Target, by contrast, relies much more heavily on merchandise that is often imported, such as apparel, housewares, and beauty. Food and beverage sales accounted for less than a quarter of Target's sales last year.

TD Cowen retail analyst Oliver Chen told BI that Target's apparel segment presents another potential complication, as fashion is more sensitive to seasonality. That could make it more difficult to reschedule orders or reshuffle suppliers and still be on-time and in-style.

"When you miss apparel timeline, you don't get it back, and Target has more apparel exposure," he said.

Beyond its grocery-to-merchandise ratio, Walmart has another key advantage over Target: scale.

"Walmart is much bigger," Kantar analyst Gina Logan told BI. "And I'm not just talking about sales.

"They have a much more advanced supply chain," she added. "They have a wider range of suppliers, they have more ability to pivot and predict demand, and can use their automation and forecasting in order to react to this in a much faster, more predictive way than Target."

This is not the first time the Spark has found a competitive advantage over the Bullseye in the grocery aisle.

When US shoppers began to cut spending back in 2023, prioritizing essentials like groceries in their weekly budgets, sales at Walmart chugged along while Target struggled.

Target has since found success by taking a much more Walmart-like stance with price cuts and bargain brands, and its share of grocery sales has increased by 1-2 percentage points per year over the last three years.

Logan says tariffs could push Target harder into the grocery game, especially with its portfolio of private-label food brands.

Walmart reports its earnings next week and declined to comment. Target, which reports on March 4, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Neither company mentioned tariffs during their respective third-quarter earnings calls, both of which took place after the US presidential election.

However, Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC later in November that Trump's sweeping tariff plan could lead the retailer to raise prices on a portion of its products.

"We never want to raise prices," he told CNBC. "Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers."

Before that, the last time the companies' executives discussed tariffs on earnings calls was in 2019, according to data from AlphaSense.

At the time, Walmart said it would not raise prices on food impacted by tariffs and would instead look to offset the cost elsewhere.

"As a guest-focused retailer," Target CEO Brian Cornell said in May 2019, "we're concerned about tariffs because they lead to higher prices on everyday products for American families."

He later said in a November 2019 call that then-President Trump's tariffs were amounting to $50 million to $60 million in added costs per quarter, adding that "obviously we're all facing the same tariff issues together."

But as Target's and Walmart's financials show, not everyone will be impacted by tariffs to the same degree.

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DeepSeek keeps boosting Chinese tech stocks. Goldman Sachs says this upswing could be different.

Hong Kong's stock market has been on a AI-fueled tech rally recently.

Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto/Getty Images

• DeepSeek's AI model integration into Weixin boosted Tencent's stock on Monday.
• Gaming giant Tencent's gains came after outsized gains in Alibaba and Baidu shares last week.
• Chinese tech stocks have rallied hard recently on the back of the hype in DeepSeek's cost-effective AI model.

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek keeps setting the country's tech stocks on fire.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Tech Index is about 25% higher so far this year, underscoring the strong gains for Chinese tech firms. Meanwhile, the broader Hang Seng Index is about 13% higher this year.

The enthusiasm in Chinese tech shares is prompting questions about whether the rally is sustainable, given China's prolonged economic downturn. An aggressive stimulus blitz in September prompted a surge in the Chinese stock markets — but that fizzled out in weeks.

But it could be different this time, analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in a Monday note. DeepSeek R-1 — the AI company's newest flagship model, which is seen as globally competitive and cost-effective — has "altered the narrative" of China tech, they wrote.

While Beijing's September policy pivot reduced the downside risks for stocks, recent technology breakthroughs are better for valuations and earnings because they are more "micro- and innovation-driven in nature," wrote Goldman's analysts.

That "might give the recovery more staying power than those that were purely driven by policy news and expectation repricing," the analysts wrote.

The recent rally is a reversal of fortune for Chinese tech firms. In recent years, the companies were battered by Beijing's crackdown on Big Tech, but now they seem to be taking turns to post outsize gains. Last week, it was Alibaba and Baidu.

On Monday, gaming giant Tencent's turn came. The stock gained nearly 8% — to their highest level since 2021 — after the company confirmed it was integrating DeepSeek's AI model in its Weixin super app. The stock closed 4% higher in Hong Kong.

The analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote that Chinese companies could see a boost in earnings from three main AI-driven areas: productivity gains, cost savings, and new revenue opportunities. A confidence boost could also raise the fair value of Chinese shares by 15% to 20%.

The technology may attract $200 billion of net buying for Chinese stocks, the analysts wrote.

Despite the optimism, the Goldman Sachs analysts highlighted risks to the current rally, including issues like data privacy, industry regulation, the intensification of Western export controls, and China's broader economy.

"As promising and strategically important as AI could be to China's long-term growth outlook, we'd emphasize that forceful policy delivery, notably fiscal stimulus, is necessary to soften the immediate tariff headwinds," they wrote. Challenges include boosting domestic demand and overcoming the disinflationary spiral.

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Jack Dorsey's daily routine: meditation, a 'wake me up' lemon drink, and 7-minute workouts

Jack Dorsey likes to meditate every morning.

Joe Raedle

• Twitter and Block cofounder Jack Dorsey balanced running both companies with a rigorous routine.
• Dorsey's routine included meditating, doing 7-minute workouts, and making to-do (and not-to-do) lists.
• Dorsey stepped down as Twitter CEO in 2021, but continues to run Block.

What did it take to run two companies at once?

Twitter and Block cofounder Jack Dorsey once balanced the responsibilities of running both companies with an early morning wake-up and a lot of meditation.

Dorsey said in a Product Hunt Live Chat in 2015 that he typically had 18-hour days — waking up around 5 a.m. and ending the day at 11 p.m.

"I look to build a lot of consistent routine," Dorsey said in 2015. "Same thing every day."

During his time as CEO of Twitter and Square, Dorsey started his day with meditation and would follow it up with a series of seven-minute workouts, he said in the 2015 live chat.

Dorsey tweeted out a workout routine from The New York Times in 2013, the training circuit only requires a chair and a wall and includes anything from jumping jacks to planks and wall sits.

The Scientific 7-Minute Workout, via @nytimes http://t.co/NIvqcYXEuR

— jack (@jack) May 10, 2013

In 2019, Dorsey said in a podcast interview with Ben Greenfield that he meditated for about an hour each morning and had started waking up at 6:15 a.m. instead.

Dorsey said in a February 2025 episode of the "In Good Company" podcast that before the pandemic, he used to go on a 10-day silent meditation retreat every year during a five-year period.

During these retreats, participants didn't speak or use their phones, but would solely meditate instead from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. for 10 days, he said.

"I'll say that my routine today is completely different than my routine three years ago, but I feel like I have a lot of it dialed in based on what I'm currently experiencing in terms of stress and just what I have to do every day," he told Greenfield.

After a morning cup of coffee, Dorsey would make the five-mile trek to Twitter's office in San Francisco — by foot, according to Bloomberg reporter Kurt Wagner's book on Twitter, "Battle for the Bird."

"He'd strap on a pair of running sandals, grab his phone, and make the five-mile walk through the streets of San Francisco to Twitter's downtown headquarters — rain or shine," Wagner wrote in his book, adding that the tech executive would listen to podcasts or audiobooks during the more than hour-long walk.

Dorsey was also known for his "wake me up" cocktail of lemon juice and Himalayan salt, according to Wagner. Some Twitter staff even tried the drink out during the company's retreat in 2018, according to the book.

Typically, Dorsey would split his day between the two companies, spending his mornings at Twitter and his afternoons and nights working at Square, his fintech company, according to Wagner. Square was renamed Block in late 2021.

In 2012, Dorsey told Fast Company he'd divide his weeks into themes in order to manage running both companies.

It went something like this:

Monday — Management

Tuesday — Product, engineering, and design

Wednesday — Marketing, growth, and communications

Thursday — Partnership and developers

Friday — Company and culture

Saturday — Day off

Sunday — Strategy

"It works in 24-hour blocks. On days beginning with 'T,' I start at Twitter in the morning, then go to Square in the afternoon," he told Fast Company.

Dorsey also incorporates fasting into his schedule. In the 2019 podcast, the billionaire said he only eats one meal per day and had fasted all weekend, adding that the first time he tried the practice he felt as if he was hallucinating.

"It was a weird state to be in. But as I did it the next two times, it just became so apparent to me how much of our days are centered around meals and how — the experience I had was when I was fasting for much longer, how time really slowed down," he said.

He later told Wired in 2020 that he eats seven meals a week, but he only eats dinner, which he consumes around 6:30 p.m.

Dorsey also told the publication he opts for a sauna and ice bath every day.

Dorsey was Twitter's CEO from 2007 to 2008 and again from 2015 to 2021. He cofounded Square, now Block, in 2009 and continues to run the company.

And while it's not unheard-of to make to-do lists of what you'd like to accomplish for the day, Dorsey also makes lists of what he doesn't want to do that day.

"We often focus on what you do want to do, and we focus on these very large goals, and if I've learned anything, it's to make the goal very, very small and repeat it and iterate it as quickly as possible so you see momentum," he said in the 2025 interview.

"It's really important to write down the small goals that you have for the day and then, more importantly, what you don't want to do because we never focus on like, 'I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to get distracted by politics or like TV or whatever,'" he said.

Some elements of Dorsey's current daily to-do list include an hour each on studying quantum physics, learning the Italian language, and keeping his programming skills up to par.

He said he does these in the morning "when I want to do the hard stuff so that the rest of the day feels like a win."

A spokesperson for Block did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.

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What Trump-supporting federal workers think of his blitz of moves to shake up the government

Federal workers who voted for Trump describe their views of his plans to cut costs and jobs.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

• Trump's plan to reshape the federal workforce is underway.
• Some federal workers told BI they voted for Trump thinking he would help the economy and struggling Americans.
• While they support cutting government waste, some don't think all federal workers should be targeted.

Many federal workers have expressed outrage and despair at President Donald Trump's workforce mandates — but what about those who filled in the bubble next to his name on the ballot?

"I voted for Trump. I wanted to see some positive change," a federal employee of 17 years told Business Insider, adding that they didn't know that change would put them at risk of losing their job.

While some of the hot-button issues Trump is tackling, like eliminating DEI initiatives and cutting spending, may resonate with right-leaning workers, policies like remote work and cutting the government's head count haven't traditionally been partisan matters.

As of Thursday, about 75,000 federal employees had accepted the President's buyout offer. That's about 3.75% of the federal workforce, inching closer to the White House's goal of reducing the federal staff count by 5% to 10%.

Four federal employees who say they voted for Trump spoke to Business Insider about their feelings on Trump's approach to the federal workforce. BI granted their requests for anonymity and verified their identities.

Trump voters said they support the cost-cutting mission

While the federal workers BI spoke with don't fully support certain policies affecting them, some stand by the overall mission to reduce government waste.

One federal worker told BI that they don't understand why some government agencies have so many employees.

"They're uncovering a lot of waste and abuse there," the worker said about DOGE. "I just can't believe some of the stuff that they're finding which is a total waste of taxpayer money."

Elon Musk, who leads DOGE — a Trump-created commission aimed at slashing government waste — has vowed to target a range of existing federal programs, including expired spending authorization that goes to veterans' healthcare and NASA.

"This is the reason why people voted for Trump," the worker told BI. "Because what is the government doing? Why aren't they forthcoming? Why? People want answers."

While the worker said they understand why some people may be annoyed to return to the office full-time, they said: "Somebody needs to put their foot down."

Another federal worker said they disagree with focusing on federal workers without better understanding the various programs and the need for federal employees to keep them going. That said, they see value in looking at where money is being spent, and they're overall supportive of Trump.

For example, the worker said they support the administration's approach with the US Agency for International Development. Trump and Musk have both called USAID out for wastefulness and supporting liberal causes. A federal judge blocked Trump's funding freeze on the agency and his attempt to put thousands of workers on leave.

USAID spent $32.5 billion in global aid in 2024. About a quarter of the money went toward humanitarian efforts, another quarter to health and population initiatives, and additional funds were directed toward governance and administrative expenses.

"I think overall we're going to end up better off with him as a president," they said.

Some had concerns about targeting the federal workforce

The 17-year federal employee said they voted for Trump thinking he would help the economy and struggling Americans. Now, the worker said they feel like the president is making things worse by putting federal workers' livelihoods at risk.

"Do Trump and Musk know the whole situation of every federal building? I don't think they're making proper choices," the worker said.

They added that while they agree with Trump's goal to cut government waste, they don't agree that cutting the federal workforce and requiring all employees to return to the office full time is an effective approach.

Another federal worker who said they voted for Trump twice "had hope that he would fulfill his promises," but that hope disappeared after the administration's deferred resignation offers. The Office of Personnel Management offered federal employees the option to resign and receive pay through September, but this offer is now on pause due to ongoing litigation.

One worker said the way they've gone about the federal workforce changes is a "little disconcerting." The worker said while they understand Musk is only there for so long, it seems like they're "getting rid of people very quickly."

The worker also has concerns about returning to work in person because they moved out of DC. The worker said it would be a financial burden to return to the office.

A federal worker said they reached out to their senators and congressman and told them that "demonizing the federal workforce is not good." They said federal workers have performance reviews, meet with supervisors, and act in compliance with their mission.

"Don't take it out on us just because of the bad behavior of the prior administration," the worker told BI, adding that they haven't changed their stance on supporting Trump because "it shouldn't have come to this."

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