Citizen satisfaction with the federal government continues to rise, despite 10 months of headlines about government layoffs and the work of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to new findings released by the American Customer Satisfaction Index on Tuesday.

The results put satisfaction with federal government services at 70.4 out of 100, a 19-year high.

“I think we were all a little bit surprised … given all the turmoil in the federal government in the first six or seven months of the year,” Forrest Morgeson, director of research emeritus at the ACSI, told Nextgov/FCW. “It’s counterintuitive.”

Satisfaction ratings — meant to serve as a cross-industry metric of how customers rate the quality of products and services in the United States — fell every year for the government between 2017 and 2021 before starting to rise in 2022. The latest measure is based on a survey of 6,914 people conducted during the 2025 fiscal year, before the recent government shutdown.

“Amid workforce reductions, shifting citizen expectations, and rapid digital transformation, federal agencies continue to demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and an unwavering commitment to excellence in public service,” the report reads. It also pins the continued upward trajectory on new technologies like artificial intelligence.

The review includes breakdowns by top agencies. The Agriculture Department got the highest satisfaction score — 77 — followed by the State Department, which improved by 6% over the last year to land at 75. The report’s authors trace that to efforts at the agency’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to launch a digital passport renewal process last fall.

But like the approximately 300,000 feds expected to leave the government by the end of the year, a key leader in that passport modernization effort left their post over the summer. And 18F, the government technology consultancy housed at the General Services Administration that was helping the Bureau of Consular Affairs with the modernization, was shuttered completely in March.