“Out of the office” is taking on a whole new meaning in the nation’s capital since most government employees are rarely in the office.

Just three percent of the federal workforce teleworked on a daily basis before the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Today, the temporary pandemic-era practice is a presumed public employee perk. Six percent report in-person on a full-time basis while nearly a third of the government workforce is entirely remote.2

President Biden is setting the example. He was out of office 532 days over the last three-and- a-half years, about 40 percent of the time he was expected to be in the Oval Office.3 While Hurricane Helene was leaving a path of destruction across the southeast United States, the president was once again at the beach in Delaware and the vice president was also out of town collecting campaign cash in California.4

And since no one’s home at the White House, the bureaucrats are setting their own schedules.

As a result, the nation’s capital is a ghost town, with government buildings averaging an occupancy rate of 12 percent.5

If federal employees can’t be found at their desks, exactly where are they?

I tried tracking them down with the help of the non-profit transparency group Open the Books. But it became a game of bureaucrat hide-and-seek, with the Biden Administration redacting the work locations of over 281,000 rank-and-file federal employees.6

Open the Books' findings are cited on pages 4 and 30.

Read the full report.