Federal employees paid $9.5 billion not to work in 2025: GAO

The federal government paid federal workers $9.5 billion not to work in 2025 amid President Trump's push to shrink the federal workforce, according to a new watchdog report .

In the report published Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office estimated that $6.7 billion of that figure was associated with the deferred resignation program.

The Department of Government Efficiency's initiative to force workers to leave via deferred resignations led to a 435% increase in paid administrative leave costs last year and was six times more than the government spent in 2023 on administrative leave.

That effort started with a cryptic email to federal workers titled "Fork in the Road," inviting workers to take a one-time offer to leave the workforce and receive pay through September 2025.

In a statement, Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, criticized the GAO report, arguing that the moves to cut the federal workforce will benefit taxpayers over time, once workers are removed from the federal government payrolls.

"The GAO report fails to highlight the difference between a one-time expense ($9.5 billion) to reduce the size of the federal government by 270,000 employees and the $40 billion per year savings in taxpayer dollars that this reduction provides. That 400% return on investment is a massive benefit to the taxpayer."

The federal workforce shrunk by roughly 216,000 workers in 2025, according to federal data. Nearly 140,000 workers took the buyout offer from the government.

Some departments have reversed cuts and hired some workers and contractors back in certain roles to fill government needs while are also continuing plans to relocate staff out of Washington to regional hubs, which could also lead to attrition.

The Trump administration has claimed DOGE led to hundreds of billions in savings, though outside experts have questioned -- and struggled to confirm -- those figures.

The national debt and federal spending have both gone up during Trump's second term.