More than 40,000 federal employees have taken the Trump administration up on its offer of a buyout, according to a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The number is from yesterday, the spokesperson said, and is “growing.”
The stat comes amid new confusion about the buyout offer, which the Trump administration said would let employees stop working but maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. On Thursday, just hours ahead of the deadline for the buyout, a federal judge temporarily delayed the decision date to at least Monday following a lawsuit filed by a group of labor unions.
When it announced the “deferred resignation” offer, the White House said it expected between 5% and 10% of federal employees to take the deal. The federal government employs more than 2 million people, which means between 100,000 and 200,000 people — or over double the current figure — would need to resign to meet the administrations’s goal.
In a typical year, more than 100,000 federal workers voluntarily leave their jobs, according to the Partnership for Public Service, amounting to an average attrition rate of 6% per year.
A representative for Democracy Forward, which represented one of the groups that filed the lawsuit that lead to the delay, told BI that the OPM is now required to tell federal employees there’s no longer a deadline to accept deferred resignations. On Thursday morning, before the judge’s ruling, federal employees were told the deadline wouldn’t be extended, according to an email reviewed by BI.
Federal employees previously told BI that they’re not confident they would be fully paid if they accepted the offer. With the decision date for accepting the buyout now in jeopardy, it is unclear how the Trump administration will proceed.
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