In 2025, the United States federal government spent $9.5 billion on administrative leave — a 435% increase from two years prior — as the Trump administration pursued one of the most sweeping workforce reductions in modern federal history. At the center of this effort was the Deferred Resignation Program, which invited federal employees to walk away from their posts while continuing to draw a paycheck for months. The promise was a $40 billion annual return on a one-time investment, but the Government Accountability Office has found that the ledger remains unreadable — and that the true cost of
Federal government spent $9.5B on leave costs in 2025 amid DOGE workforce cuts
Approximately 271,000 federal employees left government employment since January 2025 through the buyout program and related workforce reduction efforts.
Federal leaders may not have the data to know if it worked
Mark
So the administration spent $9.5 billion to get people to leave their jobs. That's a lot of money to save money. How does that math work?
Mimi
They're betting on the long game. The idea is that you pay $9.5 billion once to shrink the workforce permanently, and then you save $40 billion a year going forward because you have fewer people on the payroll. If that holds up, it's a good trade.
Luke
But does it hold up? The GAO report says they can't actually verify those savings claims. DOGE said it cut $215 billion, but the GAO could only confirm about $110 billion of that.
Mimi
Right. And the GAO also found that the Office of Personnel Management doesn't even have clean data on what the administrative leave actually cost. The buyout costs got mixed in with regular leave, so nobody really knows the true number.
Mark
So we're spending $9.5 billion, but we don't have a clear way to measure whether it worked?
Luke
That's the core problem. The GAO said federal leaders "may not have the data needed to understand whether government-wide cost saving goals are being met." It's not that the program failed. It's that we don't have a way to know if it succeeded.
Mimi
144,312 people did leave through the buyout program. That part is real. And 271,000 federal employees have left since January total. So something happened.
Mark
But was it worth $9.5 billion?
Luke
That's the question the government can't answer yet. The administration says yes. The GAO says the data doesn't exist to prove it either way.
Der Puls
- A $9.5 billion administrative leave bill — six times what the government spent in 2023 — signals just how aggressively the administration moved to hollow out the federal workforce in a single year.
- Over 271,000 federal employees have left government since January 2025, with 144,312 accepting a buyout that let them stop working while continuing to collect salaries through September.
- The administration insists the math works: a one-time $9.5 billion cost against a projected $40 billion in annual savings, framed as a 400% return on investment for taxpayers.
- The GAO has punctured that confidence — finding that administrative leave costs were so poorly tracked and categorized that no one can actually confirm whether the promised savings materialized.
- A separate GAO review found that 96% of DOGE's claimed $215 billion in cuts could not be verified, deepening questions about whether the entire efficiency campaign is built on unauditable numbers.
- The GAO is now pushing for a dedicated tracking category for workforce-reduction leave costs — a basic accounting reform that, if adopted, would at least allow future administrations to know what they are actually spending.
In 2025, the United States federal government spent $9.5 billion on administrative leave — a 435% increase from two years prior — as the Trump administration pursued one of the most sweeping workforce reductions in modern federal history. At the center of this effort was the Deferred Resignation Program, which invited federal employees to walk away from their posts while continuing to draw a paycheck for months. The promise was a $40 billion annual return on a one-time investment, but the Government Accountability Office has found that the ledger remains unreadable — and that the true cost of this particular vision of smaller government may not yet be fully known.
The federal government's administrative leave bill reached $9.5 billion in 2025 — a figure that would have seemed extraordinary in any prior year but arrived as the deliberate result of a policy choice. A Government Accountability Office report released this week traced the surge to the Deferred Resignation Program, a buyout initiative administered by the Office of Personnel Management beginning in January. Workers who accepted the offer could stop reporting to their agencies but continued drawing full salary through the end of September. Of the $9.5 billion total, $6.7 billion flowed directly to the roughly 144,312 employees who took the deal — fewer than the 200,000 the administration had initially projected, but enough to drive administrative leave costs to a peak in July, when the program accounted for the entirety of the 2.5 million leave workdays recorded that month.
Scott Kupor, the OPM director, defended the expenditure as a sound investment. With approximately 271,000 federal employees having departed since January, he argued the one-time cost would generate $40 billion in annual savings — a return he characterized as a massive benefit to taxpayers. The framing was confident, but the GAO found the underlying data far less so. Because the Deferred Resignation Program's costs were folded into general administrative leave figures across agencies rather than tracked separately, federal leaders cannot confirm whether the long-term savings goals were actually achieved. The numbers, in short, are too entangled to audit cleanly.
The credibility problem reaches further than this single program. DOGE claimed $215 billion in total federal savings on its website, but a separate GAO review found roughly $110 billion of that figure unverifiable — and concluded that the agency could not explain how 96% of its reported savings were calculated. The GAO has recommended that OPM create a dedicated tracking category for workforce-reduction leave costs, a reform that would at minimum give future decision-makers a clearer picture of what such efforts actually cost. For now, the buyout program stands as a case study in the gap between the ambition to shrink government and the discipline required to know whether the shrinking worked.
The federal government spent $9.5 billion on administrative leave in 2025, a staggering sum that reflects the Trump administration's aggressive push to shrink the federal workforce. According to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday, this figure represents a sixfold jump from 2023, when administrative leave costs totaled $1.6 billion. The surge was driven largely by a single initiative: the Deferred Resignation Program, a buyout offer that allowed federal employees to resign while continuing to collect their paychecks through the end of September.
The numbers tell the story of a deliberate strategy. Of the $9.5 billion spent on administrative leave in 2025, $6.7 billion went directly to employees who accepted the buyout. The Office of Personnel Management, which administered the program starting in January 2025, offered workers across federal agencies a chance to leave government service without immediately losing income. Those who took the deal could stop working but keep receiving salary for months. The administration estimated that 144,312 employees accepted the offer, though the GAO noted that the administration had initially projected 200,000 would participate.
The program's impact on the federal payroll was concentrated and dramatic. In July 2025, administrative leave peaked: of the 2.5 million leave workdays reported that month, 2.5 million were tied directly to the Deferred Resignation Program. By the time the program ended in September, roughly 271,000 federal employees had left government since the administration took office in January, a reduction the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, had targeted as part of its broader mission to cut federal spending.
Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, defended the expenditure in a statement Wednesday. He characterized the $9.5 billion as a one-time cost that would yield $40 billion in annual savings by reducing the federal workforce by 270,000 employees. "That 400% return on investment is a massive benefit to the taxpayer," he said, framing the buyout as a fiscally prudent way to downsize government.
But the GAO report raised significant questions about whether those savings claims can be verified. The agency found that the Office of Personnel Management lacks clear mechanisms to track the actual costs of administrative leave tied to workforce reduction efforts. Because the Deferred Resignation Program's leave costs were lumped together with general administrative leave across agencies, federal leaders cannot definitively say whether the long-term cost-saving goals the program was designed to achieve have actually been met. The GAO also noted that it was unable to determine the true financial impact of the initiative because the data was too muddled.
The transparency problem extends beyond administrative leave. DOGE claimed on its website that $215 billion in federal funding had been cut through its efforts to slash contracts, leases, and grants. But a separate GAO report released last month found that about $110 billion of that figure could not be verified. The agency said DOGE could not provide sufficient information to verify how 96% of its reported savings were calculated.
The GAO recommended that the Office of Personnel Management create a new category specifically for tracking administrative leave used in workforce reduction efforts, and improve the transparency of how such costs are reported. Without better data, the report concluded, federal leaders lack the information needed to understand whether government-wide cost-saving goals are actually being achieved. The buyout program may have succeeded in moving people out of government, but whether it succeeded in saving money remains, by the government's own accounting, unclear.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
That 400% return on investment is a massive benefit to the taxpayer— Scott Kupor, Office of Personnel Management director, defending the $9.5 billion expenditure as a one-time cost yielding $40 billion in annual savings
Möchten Sie die ganze Geschichte?
Das Original lesen bei CBS News ↗
Politics & Governance