Trump Buyouts Paid $11 Billion for Not Working, Report Says (1)

The Trump administration’s “fork in the road” deferred resignation offer resulted in federal agencies paying at least $11 billion to employees while they weren’t working through March, an advocacy group estimated in its analysis of government data.

Nearly 140,000 federal employees have voluntarily left government jobs by accepting incentives to resign since President Donald Trump began his second term as president. The costs related to those departures continue to accumulate, as some federal agencies have extended new deferred resignation offers in 2026, according to the Public Citizen analysis provided exclusively to Bloomberg Law.

The costs through March 2026 were likely in the range of $11.1 billion to $15.1 billion, the group estimated.

Donald Trump has often spoken about cutting waste and making the government more efficient,” Public Citizen said in its report. “Yet his massive federal layoffs and resignation programs have been the epitome of inefficiency and have resulted in billions of dollars in wasted federal funds.”

The spending on salaries of employees paid to stay home was one symptom of the broader ineffectiveness, the group said. Many agencies, including the US Department of Labor, were reported to bring back laid off or resigned employees in the second half of 2025 after realizing the staff cuts made it difficult to perform key functions.

Criticisms of the short-term costs of deferred resignations overlook the longer-term federal budget savings, according to the Office of Personnel Management, which has overseen much of the staff-cutting effort.

The personnel reductions due to deferred resignations are estimated to save $20 billion annually going forward, OPM spokesperson McLaurine Pinover said.

The “fork in the road” offer originating from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in January 2025 allowed federal employees to resign and continue receiving pay through Sept. 30, 2025. Those who were eligible for retirement by the end of 2025 could continue getting paid through Dec. 31 and then retire.

The resignation offer was part of broader Trump administration efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce and government spending. The White House strategy also has included changing the classifications of thousands of federal employees, making it easier to fire or lay them off.