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The 2024 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings set a benchmark for the Trump administration  

March 6, 2025

The annual analysis by the Partnership for Public Service offers insights on the federal employee experience prior to the Trump administration’s actions to reshape the federal workforce.  

WASHINGTON – The nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service today announced the 2024 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings and data, revealing that the Trump administration inherited one of the most motivated federal workforces in recent history, in which two-thirds of employees were engaged and satisfied with their work. 

Based on surveys conducted in the spring and summer of 2024 of more than 1 million federal workers at 75 agencies and 457 subcomponents, the 2024 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government engagement and satisfaction score was 67.7 out of 100. The 2024 score is one of the highest ever reported since the rankings were first published in 2003.  

This number, along with accompanying data and agency rankings, offer an important benchmark for the Trump administration as it institutes a range of policies that seek to fundamentally change the purpose and management of the federal civil service and disrupt many of the operations of government.  

“Our federal government’s core purpose is to serve the American people, and a highly motivated, engaged and expert civil service is the lifeblood of that mission,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. “Against the backdrop of a new presidential administration and dozens of executive orders that seek to downsize and politicize our nonpartisan, merit-based civil service, this new data could not come at a more critical time.   

Stier continued, “Employee engagement is not about happy employees, but having an engaged and high-performing workforce to keep us safe and deliver vital services. Rather than an arbitrary and thoughtless workforce downsizing exercise, we encourage the Trump administration to use these insights to help strengthen and invest in building a government that can more effectively serve the public.” 

Several of the agencies at the top of the 2024 Best Places to Work rankings include those that have since been heavily impacted by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort. NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services were the top three agencies, respectively, in the large agency category. The General Services Administration was among the top three agencies in the midsize category, while the National Institutes of Health was the top large agency subcomponent. 

Other agencies with the lowest employee engagement and satisfaction scores in 2024 also have been targets of the Trump administration’s federal workforce reform policies, and risk dropping even further in 2025 as a result. The Social Security Administration and the Department of Justice, for example, had the lowest scores among large government agencies, while the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Education were among the bottom five in the midsize agency category.  

The Best Places to Work rankings provide critical information to help agencies, the Trump administration and Congress assess workplace health and performance. In addition to overall satisfaction and commitment, the rankings measure employee attitudes on seven workplace categories. Among these, commitment to the agency mission received the highest rating, with a score of 74.4 out of 100, while employee input (57) and recognition (55.5) were at the bottom. 

 Key 2024 Best Places to Work Findings 

  • NASA (81.6 out of 100) registered the highest Best Places to Work score among large agencies in 2024, while the Government Accountability Office (87.7) and National Indian Gaming Commission (92.1) led the way among midsize and small agencies, respectively.  
  • The top-ranked agency subcomponents were the National Institutes of Health (81.4 out of 100) in the large category, the Kennedy Space Center (86.9) in the midsize category and the Office of Negotiations and Restructuring of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (94.2) in the small category.  
  • The Department of Homeland Security was the most improved large agency for the second year in a row, increasing its Best Places to Work score by 3.7 points for a score of 65.1 out of 100. Among the large agency subcomponents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement rose 7.3 points to 62.7 out of 100, playing a significant role in the overall improvement at DHS. 
  • The lowest ranked agency subcomponents were the Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Prisons (41 out of 100) in the large category, the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (54.9) in the midsize category, and the Great Lakes Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation within the Department of Transportation (25.3) in the small category. 
  • Employees aged 60 and older (74.9) and those with less than one year of federal experience (79.3) had the highest engagement and satisfaction scores among the different age and experience groups.  
  • At the time employees were surveyed, 55.8% of respondents had a hybrid work schedule, 13.3 % teleworked full time and 30.9% went to their workplace each day. Those who teleworked full time had the highest employee engagement and satisfaction score (76.5), followed by those who did not telework out of personal choice (71.9) and those who had a hybrid work schedule (71.3). Others who did not telework due to their job requirements (57.7) or for other reasons (49.1) had the lowest scores.  
  • Of the employees who indicated that they plan to leave their organization within the next year, 40% responded that their decision will be influenced by remote work options. 

Most of the data used to develop the Best Places to Work scores and rankings was collected by the Office of Personnel Management’s annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which was administered during the spring and summer of 2024 to eligible full–time and part–time, permanent, non–seasonal, non-political employees in the executive branch. The FEVS survey was completed by more than 647,200 000 federal workers. An additional 408,000 federal employees completed separate surveys with 13 other agencies, and their responses are included in our rankings. 

A complete list of the rankings and accompanying data is available at bestplacestowork.org. 

During the past 23 years, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service has been dedicated to building a better government and a stronger democracy. We work across administrations to help transform the way our government works by providing agencies with the data insights they need to succeed, developing effective leaders, inspiring the next generation to public service, facilitating smooth presidential transitions and recognizing exceptional federal employees. Visit ourpublicservice.org, follow us @PublicService and subscribe today to get the latest federal news, information on upcoming Partnership programs and events, and more.      

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