US President Donald Trump, in an unprecedented move, offered federal employees eight months' pay if they will resign by next week.
According to BBC, the Trump administration on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, offered buyout packages to almost all federal employees to shrink and reform the US government.
The email sent to millions of government employees asked them to decide whether they wanted to be part of a "deferred resignation" program by February 6, 2025, and if they agreed to quit in September, they would get about eight months of salary as a severance package.
The Department of Government Efficiency, a special Trump administration department headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was tasked with shrinking the size of the government, after which Katie Miller, who serves on an advisory board to the department, posted on X that the “email is being sent to more than TWO MILLION federal employees.”
The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has also announced that most of the federal employees will be required to work from their offices five days a week, ending the Covid-era home working practices.
The OPM said that the buyout offer was for "all full-time federal employees" except certain staff, including postal workers, members of the military, immigration officials, and some national security teams.
Moreover, as per the Pew Research Centre, the federal government had employed more than 3 million people by November 2024, which makes up about 1.9% of the country's workforce. The Pew analysis of data from OPM revealed that on average federal employees stay in their jobs for almost 12 years.
The Trump administration is expecting that over 10% of the employees, which is around 200,000 of the federal workers, will accept this offer. A senior official highlighted that the buyout program could save up to $100bn (£80bn).
