In the first week of the new Trump administration, the country’s more than two million federal workers were hit with rapid-fire announcements that longtime job protections and telework were suddenly being revoked. The second week brought a carrot, of sorts: an offer that federal employees could continue drawing pay and benefits through late September if they agreed to resign by Feb. 6.
The administration and its supporters trumpeted the proposal, with the billionaire Elon Musk, whom President Trump has tapped to remake the government, describing it as “very generous.”
But to many of the workers it was anything but. Some saw the offer as unenforceable, if not illegal, and federal employees and union leaders alike described it as just another front in the administration’s unsparing campaign to get as many of them as possible to leave.
What remains to be seen is not whether some will depart federal service, as plenty have already begun looking for other jobs, but instead how many and what their departures would mean for the government’s ability to carry out its responsibilities.
“Quality is going to go down,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal employees. “Because these are the people that have that expertise. And when quality starts going down, what else can you do besides say, ‘The federal government has failed us.’”
He and others fear an exodus of experienced workers: More than a quarter of federal employees are 55 or older, according to the Pew Research Center. More than half hold bachelor’s or advanced degrees. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been a particular target in recent days, two-thirds of the more than 4,600 employees hold doctorates, master’s or other advanced degrees, according to Pew.
“The amount of brain drain that will come as people leave, retire or are fired cannot be underestimated,” said one federal lawyer who is planning to leave soon and, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
Trump allies dismissed such worries. The White House has said that it expects 5 to 10 percent of the federal work force, as many as 200,000 people, to take the offer.
“These are talented individuals, which I’m sure will do well,” said Senator Ted Budd, Republican of North Carolina, which has a sizable population of federal civilian employees. “If they’re not working for the federal government, they’ll do well elsewhere.”
Still, the scale and intensity of Mr. Trump’s campaign against the bureaucracy has troubled some officials in places far from the Washington area, which is home to only about a fifth of the civilian federal work force. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are spread across the country, working at offices, job sites and labs in major cities and rural areas.
“I think this is evidence that the White House is talking quickly but has not really thought everything through,” said Lily Limón, a city councilwoman in El Paso, where more than 10,000 federal workers live. “There is a lot of pressure and a lot of trauma for people who are caught up in all of this.”
On Wednesday, federal employees warned each other that the resignation offer could be a setup, and some supervisors even advised their employees not to accept it immediately, according to people familiar with conversations inside agencies. The mistrust was bolstered by warnings from lawyers, union leaders and Democratic lawmakers, who insisted that the Office of Personnel Management did not have the legal authority to make the sort of guarantees it was promising.
“Don’t be fooled!” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, insisting that the president had no authority to pay people for months who are not working.
Though some federal workers are fully remote, most on any given day are working in person at a job site or office, according to a 2024 report from the Office of Management and Budget. Still, tens of thousands have been teleworking at least several days a week for years, and the Trump administration has been forthright that some of its recent orders, such as a requirement that all employees work in an office full-time, were meant to push people to quit.
“We don’t want them to work from home, because, as everyone knows, most of the time, they’re not working, they’re not very productive,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday.
With the end of telework, he added, “We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient, and that’s what we’ve been looking to do for many, many decades.”
These clearly stated goals, plus the vague and in some cases contradictory guidance, left plenty of federal workers skeptical that anything, including the resignation offer, was being done in their best interests.
In communications about the program, the administration gave confusing answers about the terms of the offer. An email to employees indicated that those who took the deal would not have to return to the office and would be paid regardless of their “daily workload”; a memo to agency heads said that those who took the offer should be placed on paid administrative leave, but gave agencies the right to ask them to work through the transition; a question-and-answer page published by the Office of Personnel Management said that employees would not have to work.
An X account for the new Department of Government Efficiency, which is helping oversee the administration’s work force overhaul, was even more pointed.
“Can take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits,” a post said.
Doreen Greenwald, the national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 federal workers across 37 agencies, urged members not to take the offer. “Without any understanding of why this was offered to employees, without any guarantees in writing to employees, there is no way we would ever recommend an employee resign,” she said.
Union leaders, elected officials and labor lawyers say the offer may not even be legal, in part because it circumvents individual agency discretion and union agreements already in place. Some have said that the personnel office likely does not have the authority to make such offers. Moreover, it does not currently have the funding to back up the offer since the government is only funded through mid-March.
Beyond these questions, Kristin Alden, a lawyer specializing in federal employment issues, said “there isn’t really a mechanism to enforce” the terms of the offer.
The situation left hundreds of thousands of anxious and confused federal employees, already buffeted by a fusillade of orders over the past few days, with serious decisions to make and sparse information.
Some workers saw the offer as a small victory, a way to make the next few months less precarious as they looked for other jobs. This view was echoed by Republican lawmakers.
“I’m excited,” said Representative Joe Wilson, whose district in South Carolina includes a sizable contingent of federal workers. “I think that’s a really positive way to address this issue. There legitimately have been people who have not returned to the office, and this is a great way for them to exit.”
But many federal workers, even those who had been planning to leave, were deeply skeptical.
“I do not trust it one bit,” said an employee at the Energy Department whose partner is also a federal employee. The offer, if anything, convinced her to stick around longer. “I’m not going to make it easy for you,” she said.
Beyond the proposed “deferred resignation” plan itself, the email to federal workers announcing the proposal also declared that, going forward, employees would be “subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct.” Some federal workers saw this as a sign that the administration would be looking closely for any possible reason to fire workers who did not willingly quit.
For Mr. Trump’s supporters, a culling of the federal bureaucracy has been long overdue. And many see the administration as being more than generous in the way it is helping bring such an exodus about.
“I think it’s great,” said Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, which is home to around 40,000 federal civilian workers. “I mean, if they don’t want to come back to work, and they’re looking for an exit, then exit.”
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