The government is paying more than 154,000 federal employees not to work as part of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, according to two administration officials.
The number, which has not been previously reported, accounts for workers at dozens of agencies who took offers from the government as of June to get paid through Sept. 30 – the end of the fiscal year – or the end of 2025 and then voluntarily leave government, significantly reducing the size of several major agencies, according to two Office of Personnel Management officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of the administration’s plans to scale down government.
The buyouts have rapidly sped up the process of slashing the federal workforce at an unprecedented rate, the officials said. But critics have argued that the administration’s tactics of using buyouts and administrative leave have been wasteful because the public is paying tens of thousands of employees not to work for months.
The two officials could not say how much the government is spending on salaries for employees who are resigning. The timing of buyouts has varied by agency, employees remain on their agencies’ payrolls as long as they are on leave, and some workers also got additional payments through other retirement programs. The officials also could not say how much they expect the cuts will save in payroll costs in the long term.
The employees who have resigned amount to about 6.7 percent of the government’s civilian workforce of 2.3 million people.
“Ultimately, the deferred resignation program was not only legal, it provided over 150,000 civil servants a dignified and generous departure from the federal government,” OPM spokeswoman McLaurine Pinover said in a statement. “It also delivered incredible relief to the American taxpayer. No previous administration has gotten even close to saving American taxpayers this amount of money in such a short amount of time.”
The White House declined to comment.
Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have separately estimated that the government has spent billions of dollars paying workers who are on leave either through the voluntary departure program or because of ongoing litigation over mass firings, according to a report released Thursday. The Democrats, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), argue that the U.S. DOGE Service’s race to slim government this spring led to mistakes and waste, estimating that the whole enterprise cost the government $21.7 billion.
In letters to agencies’ inspectors general Thursday, Democrats requested a review of the costs of DOGE cuts, including how much agencies spent paying workers who were sidelined or resigned.
Some agencies have publicly shared resignation numbers for their staffing changes, though the full scope of the buyouts has largely remained unclear until now. A Washington Post canvass of agencies and internal records counted 14 agencies that had shed more than 105,000 employees through early resignation offers. The higher figure from the Trump administration accounts for some agencies that The Post’s tally did not.
The administration and other Republicans seeking to reduce the footprint of government have argued that agencies have become too bloated and must be slimmed. They have projected long-term savings from the workforce purge once workers are officially off the books. Salaries make up a small fraction of overall spending, though, with most of the almost $7 trillion annual budget going to expensive health care and retirement programs.
Meanwhile, the government has spent about the same amount of money this year as it did last year to this point. Daily Treasury statements, which show the government’s ongoing expenses, are slightly higher now than last year. Expenditures on federal salaries are up about 5 percent this year compared with last year, according to federal spending trackers kept by the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Researchers say that could be due in part to more hires last year under the Biden administration. But also, many federal workers who took voluntary exits are still getting paid.
The administration’s reliance on paid leave and buyouts to trim payrolls is highly unusual, especially because of the costs associated with these methods, experts say.
Cristin Dorgelo, a senior adviser at the Office of Management and Budget under President Joe Biden, said that normally the government would take a number of steps before placing workers on administrative leave to avoid the costs.
“It’s sort of hard to overstate how inappropriate and unprecedented this is,” Dorgelo said.
“It’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Michelle Bercovici, an employment attorney who specializes in representing federal employees. “It seems so wasteful.”
Exactly how much the various buyouts and leave programs are costing is still unclear.
Blumenthal’s investigators estimated that the government has spent $14.7 billion paying workers who took buyouts, but the figure is based on multiplying the average federal salary against a rough estimate of 200,000 employees who left.
The report also calculated that the government has spent an additional $6.1 billion paying workers who were placed on leave during litigation over attempts to fire them, and $611 million for workers at the Education Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. Agency for Global Media, which have seen prolonged legal battles over plans to dramatically shrink or shutter these agencies.
“This report is a searing indictment of DOGE’s false claims. At the very same time that the Trump Administration is cutting health care, nutrition assistance, and emergency services in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘savings,’ they have enabled DOGE’s reckless waste of at least $21.7 billion dollars,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “As my PSI investigation has shown, DOGE was clearly never about efficiency or saving the American taxpayer money. I urge Inspectors General to take up our investigation’s findings and initiate a comprehensive review of DOGE’s careless actions.”
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‘Why do I get out of bed today?’
In some cases, federal workers have been on administrative leave since the very early days of Trump’s term.
One woman in her early 50s saw her job at the Education Department as the culmination of nearly 30 years of work in her field. Being put on administration leave – where she cannot work but is still being paid – has been gutting.
“My work is my whole identity,” said the employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “I’m also sensitive to the fact that the American public would say, ‘What are you crying about? You’re getting paid.’”
But she doesn’t see it that way. She can’t think of another position that would be as fulfilling. And her options for new employment once her pay runs out are limited by her family situation, which requires her to stay in the D.C. area.
She has spent her time working out at a local gym – cardio, a little yoga, a little swimming. But most of her days are spent in frustration – and depression.
“I will sometimes wake up and say, ‘Why do I get out of bed today?’” she said.
But the paychecks kept coming, and her federal health insurance remains in effect. Her annual salary is more than $130,000, which means the government has so far paid her more than $65,000 not to work. She’s also racked up three weeks or so of vacation since her last day of work.
Other federal workers were perfectly happy to be paid to leave.
Brian Griffin, a former marketing specialist at the Agriculture Department, had been planning to retire in December anyway.
He wasn’t quite ready to leave at the start of the year. Griffin thought his peers had been overworked for a long time, and he loved what he did. But the administration was threatening mass firings and was telling remote workers like Griffin that they needed to start reporting to offices. So instead of sticking it out for the rest of the year, Griffin took the deferred resignation offer and has been on leave since May, still drawing his $132,000 salary.
“When they are offering me full pay and benefits from May through September, you have to be kind of silly to say no to that,” Griffin said.
Another Agriculture Department employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, had worked in Kansas as a safety inspector but has been on paid leave since April.
He was fired, then rehired, as a probationary employee over Valentine’s Day weekend. The chaos left him convinced the government was no longer a safe employer. When a second resignation offer came in April, he jumped.
He slept through most of the first few days on paid leave, comforted by his three cats. He watched improv comedy, crafters on YouTube and a Dungeons and Dragons game played by comedians.
Eventually, he started looking for a new job, since his pay would run out in September. He applied to more than 130 positions over the next three months before he ultimately landed an offer from an animal health company. The salary and benefits were far higher than his $61,000 federal job – so much so that his wife could stop working, the inspector realized. Plus, his two salaries would overlap for six weeks.
Now he’s spent several hundred dollars on new fishing gear, dining out, new car tires and a pool pass – all while the government sends him a full paycheck to fish and watch the sun set.
“As much as I don’t want to admit it,” he recalled saying to his wife, “this ended up being a blessing in disguise.”
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