Trump Administration Paid Federal Workers $6.7b To Quit, Gao Audit Says

Federal agencies spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave last year, a sixfold increase from 2023 driven largely by the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the federal workforce, according to a new audit.

The report from the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday said the use of paid administrative leave grew by 435% last year. Much of that growth came from an Office of Personnel Management program that allowed many government workers to stay on paid leave until they resigned or retired by the end of September 2025.

GAO estimated that $6.7 billion of the paid administrative leave cost came from the deferred resignation program. The report said the OPM did not track the actual cost of paid leave used to reduce the workforce last year.

The aggressive shrinking of the federal bureaucracy was a part of the administration’s effort to cut government spending by $1 trillion, a major immediate focus of President Donald Trump when he returned to the White House last year. Trump put Elon Musk, the trillionaire entrepreneur, at the helm of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and set it loose on government agencies to find spending to cut.

In a January 2025 email with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” OPM told the federal government’s 2 million workers that they could go on paid leave and continue to receive pay and benefits until later that year. It also warned that the government might ultimately eliminate positions of the people who chose to stay.

According to OPM data, the federal workforce has shrunk by about 300,000, or 13%, since 2024, leaving the bureaucracy at its smallest size in almost two decades.

In a statement, OPM Director Scott Kupor criticized the GAO report for failing to “highlight the difference between a one-time expense” and “the $40 billion per year savings in taxpayer dollars that this reduction provides.”

“That 400% return on investment is a massive benefit to the taxpayer," Kupor said.

Critics of the deferred resignation program were quick to point to the new audit to slam the Trump administration.

“Trump spent billions to push out experienced and badly needed experts across government — this was the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.

According to the Trump administration, the wide-ranging spending cuts it has enacted since last year have saved about $215 billion through workforce cuts, canceled contracts and grants, and other savings.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.