WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration will shed about 317,000 employees this year, its human resources chief said in a statement late Friday. 

That figure is higher than the estimate of 300,000 that Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor gave earlier this year. Kupor provided the new figure in a blog post. 

The downsizing is part of President Donald Trump's campaign to shrink the federal civilian workforce, which he says is bloated and inefficient. 2.4 million employees worked for the U.S. government before Trump's second term began. 

(Reporting by Courtney Rozen in Washington)