Federal Managers Association

In the News

• Agencies spent nearly $10 billion for feds not to work in 2025 - September 16, 2026

• The use of paid administrative leave as part of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, an effort to entice federal workers to quit, across government in 2025 was 435% higher than two years prior, according to a new GAO report.

  Erich Wagner, Government Executive

  The federal government spent nearly $10 billion placing more than 100,000 federal workers on paid administrative leave for extended periods last year, a sixfold increase from two years prior driven largely by the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program aimed at encouraging feds to quit public service.
  
  A new report from the Government Accountability Office found that around 70% of that money, or $6.7 billion went to feds who opted into the DRP, a program by which agencies paid employees to stay home, in exchange for their resignation by September 2025—or December of that year, for retirement-eligible workers. While federal employees took 4 million workdays worth of leave in 2023 and 4.4 million in 2024, that number ballooned to 21.6 million workdays last year.

  To read the full article, click here.

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