Some 154,000 workers accepted buyouts offered by the Trump administration, an official said on Aug. 1.
A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirmed the number, which represents about 6.4 percent of the government workforce, in an email to The Epoch Times.
Starting shortly after President Donald Trump took office, the government told workers they could receive eight months of paid leave for not working if they left their jobs at the end of September.
“The federal workforce is expected to undergo significant near-term changes. As a result of these changes and uncertainty, or for other reasons, some employees may wish to depart the federal government on terms that provide them with sufficient time and economic security to plan for their future,” workers were told in a Jan. 28 memo issued by OPM.
“The Deferred Resignation Program was a necessary step toward a smarter, leaner, more effective government,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
He called the program “a practical, humane, and voluntary option to accelerate workforce transitions in a system that desperately needed movement,” noting that fewer than 6,000 employees were removed from the 2.4 million workforce in 2024 for bad behavior or poor performance.
The program will ultimately save the government $20 billion or more annually, Kupor said.
The White House declined to comment.
Critics say the program was wasteful.
Senate Democrats said in a report on Thursday that they estimated it cost billions of dollars to implement the program, primarily to pay employees during the months of leave, part of $21.7 billion they said was wasted by efforts led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Businessman Elon Musk helmed DOGE initially, although he has since left the administration.
“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,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who released the report, said in a statement.
Kupor said the report wrongly suggested that officials should never reduce government spending because of one-time costs and ignored how the one-time costs led to ongoing savings.
“It’s backward logic like this that got us in our current financial dire straits—$7 trillion in annual spend[ing] (up 50% since 2019) and $36 trillion in total debt (increasing to the tune of $2 trillion per year)!” he said.
The deferred resignation program mirrors private sector restructuring, he also said.
Along with the program, the government has fired tens of thousands of workers under a Trump order to eliminate waste, bloat, and insularity. Top officials have said that further cuts are planned in the future.
Zachary Stieber is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in Maryland. He covers U.S. and world news.
Reprinted with Permission from The Epoch Times – By Zachary Stieber
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Democrats — GET OVER IT!!!! The President is streamlining the government to get rid of FAT and WASTE that the Demos have been enlarging the government for decades. I have a retired Army officer who got a government job at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH and he found that the department that he started to work for, the personnel were just twiddling their thumbs, reading books or playing games. NO GUIDANCE WHATSOEVER. Total fraud, waste and abuse. He made a report to superiors and resigned. He had better things to do.
While some government activities are over staffed others are grossly understaffed. And if you’re a good efficient hard working fed employee you can expect to be over worked, under paid and not appreciated. It’s not hard to separate the good from the bad. But it’s next to impossible to separate the bad from their employment. Like our judicial system bad employees are given chance after chance to do better but in most cases, they never improve and usually get worse. You can go to any shop and find these people, they stand out like sore thumbs. They’re the reason other have to work harder, longer and get no recognition. 75% of a supervisors time is spent dealing with these under achievers. We need to desperately protect our good employees and get rid of the trouble makers and low performers occupying a slot that could be occupied by a high performer. This isn’t a unique situation only to government, it’s deep into the civilian job market as well. It’s just that government employees are soft targets….there’s no one protecting the good employees, the union is too busy protecting the slackers.
Hopefully the good this present Administration is doing to downsize government to make it more efficient will continue and last through future presidencies.
We The People need to be more aware, knowledgeable and determined to get true patriots who want a genuine “representative” government, elected into office. Then hold their feet to the fire in hiring practices and employee job performance. (To me, a decades ago federal employee, the union(s) need to GO. They only gained ground via lazy workers.)