That is 2%. Not good enough. He needs to up the ante and give another week and begin layoffs of DEI and other unwanted roles (not mass layoffs unless a department itself is being canned).

The Govt has become a nice retirement hub in the past decades.


Musk 'Buyout' Taken by 40,000 Federal Workers as Deadline Nears
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/musk-buyout-deal-more-40-034954422.html
Gregory Korte
Wed, February 5, 2025 at 9:49 PM CST 2 min read

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration's offer to pay federal employees through the end of September if they agree to leave by the end of February has attracted more than 40,000 sign-ups as of Wednesday about 2% of the federal civilian workforce.


An Office of Personnel Management official familiar with the deferred retirement data said that number was growing, and the administration expected a rush of applications in the final 24 hours. The deadline to apply which can be done simply by sending the word "resign" from a government e-mail account is the end of the day Thursday Washington time.

President Donald Trump and the head of his Department of Government Efficiency, Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, have sought ways to rapidly shrink the size of government in the first days of Trump's second term in office. The White House earlier estimated between 5% and 10% of the federal workforce could take the offer.

An average of 62,000 federal workers have retired each year over the past decade, according to data provided by OPM. Some 298,000 employees will become eligible for retirement within the next two years.
OPM has told workers it could not assure them their jobs would be safe if they don't take the deal. Most federal agencies "are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force," OPM said in an email to federal workers Jan. 28.

Exact figures on the number of people eligible for the deal haven't been released. There are nearly 2.3 million civilian federal employees, but the number eligible for the deferred resignation plan could be less than half of that. OPM exempted civilian defense, immigration and law enforcement employees, postal workers, and certain other sensitive positions.

Federal employee unions have urged members to not take the deal, questioning its legality and enforceability. "Federal employees shouldn't be misled by slick talk from unelected billionaires and their lackeys," said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

7 mos pay seems like a really good deal. I'd have expected a lot more to take it than even 5%. What do they get if laid off?

I'd make scripts to personalize emails to the "employees" stating that their position (script at random between 78-91% likelihood) will be eliminated, and severance will only be half of what we are offering now if we have to terminate you.

2% will never be missed. Trump needs to drop a hint that next Monday the layoffs begin.

A lot of these individuals probably have no career skills whatsoever.
Half probably liberal arts majors.
Learn to code. Learn to farm. Move to Canada or Mexico.

It seems like the best tactic would have been 8 months severance if you take the deal and 3 or 6 months if you don't take the deal or something along those lines.

Maybe he plans to make them all go back to work and then make them quit, ie No Severance.

Not sure how it works in government, but if you quit your job in Texas, usually you don't get unemployment.

From I saw in USACE most were high level GS engineers close to retirement anyway.

All we did was put them on a long Viking river cruise a summer earlier.

gabehcoud said:

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People who were going to retire anyway. What a waste

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Yep, exactly. They will fight tooth and nail to keep their cushy jobs - hoping for safety in numbers as well as hiding behind union lawsuits.

2%r... the # tracks.

Probably the best thing is not to make this optional, just review and layoff and give severance based on years of "service"

aggiez03 said:

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It seems like the best tactic would have been 8 months severance if you take the deal and 3 or 6 months if you don't take the deal or something along those lines.

Maybe he plans to make them all go back to work and then make them quit, ie No Severance.

Not sure how it works in government, but if you quit your job in Texas, usually you don't get unemployment.

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Some of these workers are civil servants who would be difficult to fire (maybe with a reduction in force?). The other problem is that these really aren't severance payments because those would have to be authorized by Congress. Instead, what is being offered is the opportunity to resign now, and not have to report to work for seven months. I'm not sure what would happen if they take other employment during that period. So, it's not a pure severance deal.

that number is NOT counting the 1000 employees fired at EPA by Zeldin

or the fact that USAID has been gutted with likely thousands laid off

or that every new Trump Secretary has been laying off employees

Paying six months of salary to a bunch of people who were going to retire in six months anyway.

Pure. Genius.

Because it's against federal law to just pay people not to work. And there's nothing in the CFR allowing this type of long severance. So a lot of people at places like DFAS have no idea how to even pay these people going forward.

I'm not in the government sector, but severances have to follow a legal process with legally binding documents being signed on both sides (employee and company).

In most cases, if you resign (for example by typing the word resign), you are ineligible to be considered for severance due to having given notice of resignation prior to executing the legal signature process.

nbbob said:

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The fact that 40,000 is only 2% of the federal workforce tells you all you need to know about our bloated government.

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But, how many would have been retiring anyway?

TexasAggie73 said:

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nbbob said:

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The fact that 40,000 is only 2% of the federal workforce tells you all you need to know about our bloated government.

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But, how many would have been retiring anyway?

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I think we have a pretty good data point, 2%.

i am willing to see how all this plays out. i think this will backfire on some who should have taken the leave. if they end up getting fired or go to jail that's better than paying them to leave.

What I can't guess is whether or not the good folks leave or stay.

Do you stay in the hopes that all the dead weight in your department leaves, or do you go because maybe the rest of the good guys are leaving, and you don't want to be left in a department of dead weight that refuses to leave.