Working from home shifts
It was President Trump's first full day in office, and an executive order has already been signed to demand that all Federal employees must return to the office five days per week.
94 per cent of government employees had either been working from home part-time or all of the time, with many agencies seeing around half of their staff working fully remotely.
Naturally this led to some enormous rental vacancies across government headquarters, and plenty of wastage.
The order issued on Monday will impact millions of workers across all US government departures and agencies.
And the move may in turn result in a wave of voluntary redundancies.
A statement was posted on the White House website here:
Source: White House
Of course, Trump was a realtor with commercial interests, and this move perhaps isn't entirely unexpected in America.
However many countries across Europe have seen productivity sinking far behind that of the US, and if the US powers further ahead in that regard there may be some pressures to follow suit.
Australia, too, has seen productivity and real income per capita slump somewhat alarmingly over recent years.
Trump's inauguration speech promised widespread oil drilling to bring prices down.
And there followed a sweeping range of executive orders to firm up border security, freeze Federal hiring and improve government efficiency, and remove DEI programmes and regulatory red tape, among others.
One of the biggest unknowns surrounds the implementation of tariffs, but the new administration brings a wave of optimism for change after a difficult few years of cost of living pressures through the pandemic.
"Don't bet against America", as they say.
