For decades, those of us with misgivings about government bloat who work in the policy world have faced a difficult choice every time a friend has told us, with shining eyes, that he’s landed a new federal job and is deciding whether to take it.

Should I be honest, and tell him I’m not sure why his position in the Defense Intelligence Agency — working on the same portfolio as an at least equally qualified analyst at the CIA — needs to exist?

Should I suggest that anchoring his family’s livelihood on a salary drawn from the discretionary-budget sliver of a government with six times as much debt as revenue might not be a wise long-term choice?

Or should I be a friend and just say “congratulations”?

I confess that, having grown complacent with Washington’s seemingly fireproof employment boom, I’ve almost always chosen the easier option.

Now, as President Donald Trump undertakes the government’s deepest personnel cuts in 30 years, I regret that complacency.

By early June, his administration had eliminated 60,000 jobs from a federal workforce of 3 million, the Labor Department reported.

The State Department this month announced plans to lay off 15% of its workforce, while the Supreme Court greenlit Trump’s intent to vastly downsize the Department of Education.

Several friends and former colleagues of mine may be included in those cuts, and some — from the pure perspective of America’s best interests — likely deserve to be.

But that’s not something you tell a friend who’s losing his job. It’s something you ought to have told him before he ever took it.

Some friends who fear layoffs call the current cuts reckless and random, a result of Trump’s zeal for crushing the “Deep State” rather than any clear fiscal imperative.

Others tell me, in the classic logic of the “tragedy of the commons,” that when it comes to balancing the budget, the elimination of their position is a mere drop in a vast ocean.

Both points contain a grain of truth, but mask a harsh fiscal reality.

Trump is grappling with a structural problem inherent to America’s current budget conundrum: how to extend the 2017 tax cuts without massive deficit increases, as entitlement spending and debt service rise year over year and Congress remains unwilling to confront the former.

The government’s $2 trillion discretionary budget contains the only available levers for cuts — and 45% of it is employee compensation.

This year, Trump’s budget cuts may go primarily to offset new spending on immigration enforcement.

But next year, and every year into the foreseeable future, progressively greater cuts will be necessary, simply to offset rising mandatory spending.

It’s a common misconception that the federal workforce has grown only minimally over recent decades. That’s true enough of directly employed government employees, a total that has grown by 1% per year since 2000.

But the real growth has been among those employed as federal contractors — which skyrocketed from 2.4 million to 5 million between 1999 and 2020.

Taking contractors into account, the full federal workforce has grown by around 45% this century — exponentially greater than the growth of the general population.

Though many of those employees officially work for defense companies like Lockheed Martin or consulting firms like McKinsey, their salaries depend as much on government appropriations as those of government employees do — and much of the growth in the discretionary budget, which has more than doubled since 2000, goes to pay those contractor salaries.

One friend who works in government consulting recently told me he expected his contract to be revoked and to lose his job soon thereafter.

After I expressed my condolences, he reassured me that he and his coworkers were planning a media campaign to generate sympathy for their plight.

I decided it wasn’t the best time to suggest that size-of-government polling data suggests that most taxpaying Americans will cheer the removal of another consultant from the annual federal tab — or to mention that in the private sector, where most Americans work, mass layoffs happen all the time.

The best we can do for friends who lose their government jobs is to offer our sympathy, our help and our best advice.

But in the future, we must have the strength to tell them the honest truth: “Governments, like private firms, must make a bottom line. They might be able to borrow more than private companies, but they cannot borrow forever.

“It’s unfair to expect more loyalty from the American taxpayer than a corporate employee can from his company’s shareholders.

“In a fiscally stressed environment, how essential will your job be, really?

“Plan accordingly.”

John Masko is a journalist based in Boston, specializing in business and international politics.