President Trump's portrait hands on the USDA building - June 2025: An accounting by the Partnership for Public Service puts the total reductions of Trump's government reshaping —including through layoffs, attrition and announced deferred resignations—at just under 200,000 through the end of August. Image: Sue Dorfman/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
While the impending September 30 end of the current fiscal year brings a threat of a potential partial government shutdown, for many federal employees it will bring a more definite change: the end of their “deferred resignation” periods.
That is the most common deadline under both the original government-wide offer—which kept employees in paid status on administrative leave up to a set separation date—and individual agency-specific offers that followed. In some cases, agencies allowed for a later date in order for employees to qualify for retirement benefits.
OPM’s most recent count is that nearly 300,000 positions will be eliminated by the end of this year—about an eighth of the total as of the start of the year.
That number includes some 275,000 due to: normal attrition as a general hiring freeze has remained in effect (with various exceptions); deferred resignation; and acceptance of other types of incentives, such as standard buyouts and/or early retirement offers.
Although OPM did not break out the figures, the large majority of those likely are leaving under deferred resignation; OPM over the summer put the acceptance figure for those offers at above 150,000. Some already have left that status, for example to take other jobs; ethics restrictions including those against outside employment still apply during deferred resignation.
In addition, about 21,000 jobs will be lost to RIFs and layoffs of probationary employees, OPM said.
A separate accounting by the Partnership for Public Service puts the total reductions—including through layoffs, attrition and announced deferred resignations—at just under 200,000 through the end of August. That includes some 55,000 at DoD, 30,000 at Treasury (mostly IRS) and 21,000 at Agriculture.
Meanwhile, several agencies such as GSA, IRS and Labor reportedly have offered several hundred of employees who were either RIF’d or put on deferred resignation the opportunity to return to their jobs. It is uncertain how many other agencies may be doing the same, or how many employees might accept such offers.
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