“This would be the first time the government has executed cuts of this magnitude — and all at once — since the drawdown following World War II,” the story said.

Economic analysts told the Post that the projected agency layoffs would reduce employment in the Washington metro area by 1.8 percent.

Speculation over the projected cuts’ impact on the workforce has abounded since the Office of Management and Budget released topline numbers on Feb. 27, calling for a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which would be offset by $462 billion in domestic spending.

The numbers portend double-digit cuts at numerous agencies — with EPA’s budget projected to be slashed as much as 25 percent — but agencies won’t get a sense of the exact figures until the Trump administration releases its spending budget this week.

Federal employee unions have railed against the proposed cuts ever since the Feb. 27 budget disclosure and have sought to mobilize a massive grassroots effort to sway Congress to kill the spending plan.

“Cutting the size of the federal government’s civilian workforce won’t make federal programs run better, erase our national debt or save taxpayers any money,” American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox said in a statement.

“All it will do is increase our dependence on more expensive and less regulated private-sector contractors, and push more of the burden onto state and local governments that are struggling under the weight of unfunded mandates.”

The National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said in a statement that the cuts will drastically impact the government’s ability to provide essential services.

“Reports that the new administration will propose deep and indiscriminate budget cuts across multiple federal agencies should be alarming not just to those in the civil service but to taxpayers everywhere,” he said.

“Federal workers we represent are worried about their jobs and about the ability of their agencies to carry out their missions under such austere conditions: making sure our air and water are clean; inspecting new foods and medicines; shutting down financial scams that prey on consumers; maintaining our national parks; and safeguarding nuclear materials, just to name a few.”

Reardon reiterated NTEU’s earlier call for its membership to rally Congress to reject the White House’s spending plan.

“I have spent the entire year trying to correlate something to pricing, and in fact we have found you can’t really correlate that. My answer to you is we don’t have an economic indicator out there,” Rixey told reporters after his speech. “It could also be currency difference. There are so many factors that it’s not what I thought it was. I thought we could directly correlate it.”

“Now, I’m sure oil price is having an impact on that particular number, but I didn’t find the correlation I was looking for,” he added.

The drop in dollar value is also partly misleading, Rixey noted, because a number of high-end sales – most notably a trio of fighter jet sales to Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain – have been delayed. The package reportedly includes 72 Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles for Qatar and up to 40 Boeing F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets for Kuwait. Bahrain’s package includes Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters.

“What would have happened if they had gone this year? We would have had record sales again,” Rixey said. “So we’ve decided maybe we should look at this like a rolling three-year number” in order to have a truer sense of trends.

But Rixey also downplayed the overall figure, noting that the US does not set a sales target each year.

“We don’t look at sales like a benchmark we’re trying to capture. It’s not a number we’re trying to go for. Sales is really a fundamental result of foreign policy. We just have to understand what kind of workforce we’re going to need to prosecute those sales,” Rixey said. “It’s nothing more than a tool for us to anticipate what we’re going to anticipate and work with.”

The admiral also continued his defense of the speed of the FMS system, following up on comments made last month at a conference and an editorial featured in Defense News.

As to the jet sales, Rixey would not comment on the full status, but acknowledged media reports that the sales are “moving forward.”