United States President Donald Trump has offered most federal workers the option to leave their government jobs by next week in exchange for eight months of severance pay in his most profound and rapid move yet to overhaul the government.
The buyout offer was announced on Tuesday in a memorandum issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as Trump seeks to fulfil one of his campaign promises to shrink the government.
The memo also said the Trump administration would begin subjecting all federal employees to “enhanced standards of suitability and conduct” and warned of future downsizing.
The email sent to millions of employees said those who leave their posts voluntarily will receive about eight months of salary, but they have to choose to do so by February 6.
Katie Miller, who serves on an advisory board to the Department of Government Efficiency, a Trump administration department headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tasked with shrinking the size of the US government, posted on X: “This email is being sent to more than TWO MILLION federal employees.”
The US federal government employed more than three million people as of November, and they accounted for nearly 1.9 percent of the nation’s entire civilian workforce, according to the Pew Research Center.
The average tenure for a federal employee is nearly 12 years, according to a Pew analysis of data from the OPM.
A senior administration official told NBC News that the White House expected 5 to 10 percent of federal staff to quit, resulting in an estimated $100bn in savings.
Even a fraction of the workforce accepting buyouts could send shockwaves through the economy and trigger widespread disruptions throughout society as a whole, triggering wide-ranging – and as yet unknowable – implications for the delivery, timeliness and effectiveness of federal services across the nation.
In response, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, Everett Kelley, said the offers should not be viewed as voluntary buyouts but as pressure on workers not considered loyal to the new administration to vacate their jobs.
“Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Kelley said in a statement. “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
The email to public workers resembled a message that was sent to Twitter employees when the social media platform was taken over by Musk in late 2022. It asked for an emailed response if they wanted to stay at the company, which Musk later renamed X.
Musk, who spent more than $270m to help Trump and other Republicans win election in November, has been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency.
