Harvard Kennedy School’s The People Lab launches the Public Servant Project – a national hub for research on the government workforce

More than 22 million public servants work across federal, state, and local governments delivering essential services, but evidence on what public servants experience, and how the public views them, remains scarce. The Public Servant Project will fill that gap by collecting and sharing research on the perceptions, experiences, challenges, and needs of public servants.  

“Public servants shape nearly every aspect of daily life in the United States, yet we pay surprisingly little attention to how they are perceived, what they experience at work, and what motivates them to serve,” said Elizabeth Linos, who leads the Public Servant Project and is the faculty director of The People Lab and the Emma Bloomberg Professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. “The Public Servant Project is designed to fill that gap with rigorous, accessible evidence that can help build a more effective, responsive, and trusted public sector.” 

The Public Servant Project’s work is organized around three pillars. The first pillar, Perceptions of Public Servants, is an ongoing series of quarterly surveys and experiments tracking how the American public views government workers and how those perceptions shift over time. The series examines what role those views play in shaping trust in government, beliefs about government efficiency, and interest in public sector careers. The first survey results are being released today, and key findings include:  

• Most Americans view public servants favorably, but not as favorably as private sector workers: Most Americans view public servants favorably, especially on competence (68%) and integrity (57%). But private sector workers are rated significantly higher across warmth, competence, and innovation, with the gap reaching 36 points on innovation. 
• Party affiliation is the strongest predictor of how Americans perceive government workers: Democrats are 22% more likely to rate public servants favorably for warmth, 16% more likely for competence, and 13% more likely for integrity. But there are even larger partisan gaps in how Americans view specific types of public servants – for instance, Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to rate Election Officials favorably for integrity (85% vs. 37%), while Republicans are more than four times as likely to rate ICE agents favorably for competence (91% vs. 22%).  
• Interest in public service fell sharply at the beginning of this year: Interest in public sector careers fell 9% in a single quarter (December 2025 to March 2026), with the decline reaching 18% among Democrats and 41% among Black Americans. 
• How you feel about public servants determines your interest in serving: Perceptions of public servants influence whether someone is interested in pursuing public service. For example, a 1-point increase in integrity perceptions on a 7-point scale is associated with a 17% increase in interest in public sector work — up to 41% interest from a baseline interest rate of 35%. 
• The label used to describe government workers matters for how people perceive them: Americans consistently rate those framed as “Public Servants” as warmer, more competent, and acting with more integrity than those described as “Bureaucrats” or “Government employees.” Americans are also more likely to imagine “Bureaucrats” as White, as men, and as members of the opposite political party than “Public Servants.”  

Another pillar of the Public Servant Project, Public Servant Pulse, is the first national, validated annual survey designed to directly elevate the voices of state and local public servants. While federal employees have long been tracked through the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, no equivalent benchmark has existed for the state and local workforce. The Public Servant Pulse addresses that longstanding gap by providing a common benchmark, generating comparable data on employee experience across jurisdictions nationwide. The survey opens May 28, 2026 for all state and local public employees in the U.S.   

The third pillar, What Works in Government Workforce Policy, synthesizes the evidence base on what is effective in government workforce policy, translating research on recruitment, retention, and workplace support into practical guidance for decisionmakers. This component of the project will be built out over the coming years to complement current work on public servants’ experiences and how the American public perceives them and their work. In the meantime, research by The People Lab on strategies to effectively recruit, retain, and support talent in government is available on the lab’s website. 

Together, the three pillars of the Public Servant Project aim to give researchers, government decisionmakers, journalists, and the public a single, authoritative source for understanding and strengthening the government workforce. 

The People Lab, based at the Harvard Kennedy School, empowers the public sector by producing cutting-edge research on the people of government and the communities they are called to serve. Using evidence from public management and insights from behavioral science, we study, design, and test strategies that can solve urgent public sector challenges in three core areas: strengthening the government workforce, improving resident-government interactions, and reimagining evidence-based policy making.   

More information about the Public Servant Project is available at publicservantproject.hks.harvard.edu.