Scoop: Inside the Biden White House's aggressive back-to-office push

White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, facing huge numbers of federal workers who aren't coming to the office, is privately pushing Cabinet secretaries to break their staffs' stubborn work-from-home habits.

Why it matters: Only about half of Cabinet agencies have achieved the White House's goals for returning to offices by January, according to an administration official. Zients wants to inject more urgency into the effort.

With over 2.2 million employees, the federal government is the largest employer in the country.

In D.C., the reluctance of some 200,000 federal workers to return to the office has devastated local business downtown.

Driving the news: Following up on his Cabinet-wide memo this summer, Zients has been calling agency heads this week to press them on how much progress they have made, according to the official.