Yes, as of early 2026, it is confirmed that hundreds of thousands of U.S. federal employees resigned in 2025 to receive government compensation through a special program.
Key details of this mass resignation include:
The Deferred Resignation Program (DRP)
- Total Participants: Approximately 154,000 federal workers accepted buyouts under the "Deferred Resignation Program" introduced by the Trump administration in early 2025.
- Compensation Terms: Employees who agreed to resign were placed on paid administrative leave, continuing to receive their full salary and benefits through September 30 or December 31, 2025, without being required to work.
- Total Departures: When combined with early retirements and attrition, the total number of federal employees who left the government in 2025 reached approximately 317,000.
Context and Impact
- Purpose: The administration utilized these buyouts as a primary tool to rapidly shrink the federal workforce, which consisted of roughly 2.3 million civilian employees at the start of 2025.
- Historical Significance: This marked the largest single-year exodus of civil servants since World War II.
- Estimated Costs: The program was projected to cost roughly $14.8 billion in short-term salary payments, though officials argued it would save the government roughly $28 billion annually in the long term.
- Criticism: Opponents and unions criticized the program as wasteful, arguing the government paid "tens of thousands of employees not to work for months" and created a "brain drain" of institutional expertise.
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