Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

https://www.newsweek.com/largest-mass-resignation-in-us-history-as-100000-federal-workers-quit-10802162

by DocFeind • 10 months ago

114 99 10 months ago

pm90• 10 months ago

It’s a terrifying experiment in hollowing out the civil service. At some point a critical mass of Federal workers may be lost which brings the entire machinery of the Federal Government to a standstill.

It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.

kleinsch• 10 months ago

That's their entire strategy. Shrink government causing government to become ineffective, which provides evidence that government should shrink even more.

xnx• 10 months ago

AKA "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

cogman10• 10 months ago

It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.

You pretty much have to double spend to get out. Same way ICE is handling recruitment shortfalls.

Government jobs have never had great salaries (but decent benefits) vs the private sector. You need to make those jobs actually competitive.

burkaman2• 10 months ago

One of the main selling points was stability and a clear career path, and obviously that's gone now. Would probably take decades to rebuild that.

buran774• 10 months ago

That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Then the people currently in power and their cronies will come out of the woodwork "saving" the country with their private companies and interests. Competing with an empty shell of a government is the easiest way.

As a side effect, if they're to lose the next election they leave a corpse on the doorstep of the next administration. That makes it so much easier to pass on the blame.

Aligns perfectly with these people's views that a country is best led like a company not like a democracy. The realistic outcome will be formally (rather than the informal one as until now) corpocracy.

rayiner13• 10 months ago

There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe....

No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors. This is not a sustainable situation in a democracy.

actionfromafar3• 10 months ago

I think we were pretty close to a Corpocracy before this administration. The realistic outcome is "Russia" but spelled "USA".

at-fates-hands2• 10 months ago

>> That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless.

Not really sure ANY government service runs well. There are maybe one or two but as a whole government run anything never seems to be done well or at a decent cost. Just scan the comments about the massive overspending and poor service we already get as taxpayers.

Trying to get a properly run government program or service has been going on since the country was founded.

ldoughty2• 10 months ago

The point is that they don't want it to recover. This is evidence that the US Government can't be trusted to provide the service themselves, and those functions should be privatized / contracted out instead... like how our Defense budget is so small thanks to us paying government contractors for everything we need, like $5,000 screwdrivers and $7,500 toilet seats installed by $300/hour Mechanic Specialist II's.

timr5• 10 months ago

I'm not terrified. Just to put some perspective on this, per Pew [1], the federal workforce excluding the postal service (which has actually shrunk as a semi-private employer) has grown by about 1% per year since 2000. As of 2024, it was at 2.4M people. The federal workforce is dramatically bigger than it was even a few years ago [2].

Moreover, the vast majority of federal workers don't have anything to do with the kind of consumer-facing services that people think of when they think "government". More than half of all federal employees comprise: the Defense departments (Army, Navy, DoD, etc.), the Department of Homeland Security and the VA [3].

The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.

To be clear, this is not the right way to reduce the size of the federal government, but I'm not "terrified" of losing 100k employees in a government of this size. We need more cutting, not less.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

grumbelbart• 10 months ago

the federal workforce excluding the postal service (which has actually shrunk, as a semi-private employer) has grown by about 1% per year since 2000

That's less than it seems though, given that the US population has grown with over 0.7% per year for most of those years.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

ndiddy2• 10 months ago

If you zoom out (https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-f...), the size of the federal workforce has been at around 2.7-3 million people since the late 1960s, while the US population has gone from ~198 million in 1967 to ~343 million in 2025. We've gone from 14.39 federal employees per 1,000 people in 1967 to 8.78 federal employees per 1,000 people in 2024. Given that many of these employees do things like maintain infrastructure, regulate goods and services, and provide healthcare, you would expect the federal workforce to scale with the population.

The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.

Most of the budget increase (~80-85% depending on whose projections you look at) comes from entitlements (social security, medicare/medicaid) and interest payments on the federal debt rather than any new spending. Of course interest payments are caused by past irresponsible spending, but it's hard to avoid debt if whenever the "party of fiscal responsibility" is in power, it does loud and flashy budget cuts that don't meaningfully reduce federal spending, followed by massive tax cuts to juice the economy. This is basically the equivalent of quitting your job and buying a ton of stuff on a credit card because you won $1000 on a scratch-off.

nullocator• 10 months ago

Why do we need more cutting? Why does the size of the federal government need to decrease? Please list the ways in which I and my community will benefit from a federal government with less personnel.

darknavi• 10 months ago

Resignation? Doesn't that imply that they are choosing to leave?

The resignations—which come as part of a program drawn up by President Donald Trump at the start of his second administration—will happen on Tuesday as Congress is facing a deadline on the same day to authorize more funding or risk a government shutdown.
If there is no deal, the White House has ordered federal agencies to make plans for the large-scale redundancies.

0xffff22• 10 months ago

I believe the 100k are those that took the "deferred resignation program" at the beginning of the year. They have been getting paid to not bother showing up to work all this time, but are finally coming up on the date where they will all officially resign. Those people are choosing to leave.

AnimalMuppet• 10 months ago

Took? Or got placed on?

Genuine question, because I don't know the answer. Was it actually voluntary at the time?

ldoughty2• 10 months ago

These people mostly already and effectively stopped working... The people I know that took this offer were told to stop showing up for work back in March-ish time frame. I see nothing in the article to suggest a sudden wave of new people taking up this offer -- as far as I can tell, the only thing that's about to change from what this article says is that our unemployment numbers will start to reflect it if those federal workers did not find new employment.

Jtsummers2• 10 months ago

These people mostly already and effectively stopped working... The people I know that took this offer were told to stop showing up for work back in March-ish time frame.

Well, yes. That's what the DRP was, they were put on administrative leave through 30 September. It's kind of hard to work when you're on admin leave. Are you surprised by the fact that this group of DRP folks are resigning on 30 Sept when that was the agreement they signed under the DRP? Did you expect something else?

paulsutter• 10 months ago

All of these resignations were submitted before February 12. The resigning employees have been collecting payroll until today, but they resigned long ago

Flagged as misleading/inflammatory. Most of the comments here are probably bots.

Simulacra• 10 months ago

Salient point: this is not a resignation, these are the people who took the buyout, and the buyout period is ending. There's not going to be this mass resignation today of people walking out of their jobs. They've already left the position.

thinkcontext• 10 months ago

The deferred retirement scheme is an incredibly ill-conceived way of shrinking the government. The way the incentive is structured it encourages the workers who are most able to find another job to leave. These are your best workers. The ones that will disproportionately stay are the least competitive in the job market. The other group of workers that will take it are those that were going to leave or retire anyway. So, for them its a waste of money and the transfer of their knowledge is cut short.

The same goes for the other DOGE employment initiative of firing probationary employees. These are mostly either people you have just hired or those that have been promoted. Of course, these are the employees you would most want to keep.

atmavatar• 10 months ago

That's the point, though.

Since Reagan, the Republican party's stance has always been that government can't do anything right, so we should get rid of as much of it as possible, and every time Republicans have had the power to do so, they've sabotaged various agencies, then pointed to the inevitable problems that arise as proof of their claim.

An example of this was decommissioning mail sorting machines during Trump's first term, resulting in mail delays.

If you get rid of the most competent government workers, then obviously, government services will function less effectively, which will serve to bolster claims that those services simply don't work and should be shuttered anyway.

bix62• 10 months ago

Can someone explain the DRP to me? I don’t understand why people got paid to take 8 months of leave if they resigned?

actionfromafar3• 10 months ago

It's a quick and easy way to kneecap an organization. Who cares what it costs, it's only taxpayer money.

ndiddy2• 10 months ago

At the start of the year, the OPM announced that federal workers could either take a voluntary resignation and go on paid leave until Sept. 30 (today), or be subject to return-to-office orders (including forced relocation if necessary), higher performance standards, and further involuntary layoffs. According to this article, about 100,000 people took the voluntary resignation.

As for motive, it's a way for the Trump admin to clear out the federal workforce and install loyalists to make it easier for him to carry out his agenda.

bix62• 10 months ago

Thank you!

txru3• 10 months ago

There are two elements of this situation that I'm consistently trying to open-mindedly hold in balance.

One part is what I call "The Great Defederalization". In a myriad of ways, the federal state that was erected between FDR and LBJ is being torn down. That state existed on a group of decisions that allowed independent agencies outside of the direct oversight of the president: the Humphrey's Executor agencies, NLRB, FCC, FTC. The Supreme Court and Congress are very happy to work on rolling them back, and they were constructed on pretty awful jurisprudence to begin with. That can work-- we should engage in creative destruction, the administrative state did restrict economic growth, and it did create carve-outs out of the Constitution. If it made us a more reliable partner, that did come at the cost of flexibility.

But at the same time, this executive isn't defederalizing to defer power to the states-- it's doing it to grant more immediate power to the president, who is in effect weaponizing the armed forces and police forces against non-compliant localities and personal enemies. News like this happening the same week as the president sends the Army to a passive American city in order to plainly provoke a conflict, and directing his DoJ to enact a case on paper thin justification, is troubling, to say the least.

rayiner13• 10 months ago

The first point requires an additional layer. The modern administrative state has its origins in Woodrow Wilson ideology of scientific governance. Wilson didn’t like democracy and wasn’t much of a fan of the constitution: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad....

A consequence of centralizing governance in a giant federal bureaucracy is that it’s become dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe.... That was a predictable result of federalization. If the government is run by unelected bureaucrats insulated from the elected officials, then it’s completely unsurprising it will become dominated by the party that prefers bigger government.

In classic Trump fashion, he doesn’t care about federalism per se, hence his inconsistent actions on law enforcement and crime. But he has a brain stem level reaction that it’s crazy he got elected President and is expected to cajole a federal workforce of 1.8 million democrats into executing his policies. And he’s not wrong about that.

Regarding the DOJ, Thomas Jefferson personally directed the prosecution of Aaron Burr: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-great-trial-that-tes.... So that part isn’t anything new. As to the merits of the case, 18 USC 1001 is astonishingly (and I’d argue unconstitutionally) broad. I think prosecuting people for “obstruction” without an underlying crime is bullshit, but the government does it all the time. And Comey vociferously defended the practice.

SR2Z3• 10 months ago

It will be run by the party that prefers bigger government... unless you remember how much the current administration has expanded the deficit and DHS.

Also, if you're saying that the past 100 years of American history, with all its various technocrats, was the result of a single ideology operating the government... maybe that ideology actually works pretty well?

ethbr12• 10 months ago

It's also important to highlight the origins of modern US civil service (read: the Wilson+ era you're referencing) in the anti-Conkling/spoils Congressional factions and presidents of the late 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Breeds_(politics)#Setback...

As recently as 1880s the US was still assigning important civil service roles to whomever donated the most money to election campaigns.

The 1880s - 1970s generally featured a more protected civil service, with both advantages (insulation from changing presidents / legislators, maintaining institutional knowledge and competence) and disadvantages (insulation from performance-based hiring / firing, optimizing for bureaucratic rules became more effective than doing a great job).

The latter of which and anti-government sentiment post-Nixon drove deregulation and more direct executive control of the bureaucracy (e.g. the OPM).

As with all pendulums, we're now again seeing the excesses of affording too much power to the presidency (firing institutional knowledge because their role/expertise isn't currently politically en vogue).

Hopefully post-Trump this will spur reinforcing and insulation of civil service expertise.

txru3• 10 months ago

then it’s completely unsurprising it will become dominated by the party that prefers bigger government.

I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position.

Aaron Burr

I find myself more and more often in the position of having to look back many decades for precedent of things that are currently happening. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But the variance of what to expect is wider, and I think it's fair to cast out one's net of expectations wider, and possibly darker.

Burr was a complicated man, doing complicated things, in a newly defined nation that was still defining norms. His trial was no stellar example of how to find truth and remonstrate wrongdoing. And I agree, "Lying to a federal officer" is absolutely ripe for misuse. A critical component of any subjective human system is integrity and adherence to justice. I don't think many people will look at Comey's prosecution and see it as the clear-headed and honest pursuit of justice.

tzs3• 10 months ago

Other Republican Presidents didn't have trouble getting their policies carried out despite similar civil service party membership and donation distributions.

j_w• 10 months ago

Sorry, but from FDR onward how did the administrative state restrict economic growth? That's a substantial claim to make in passing.

throw0101c3• 10 months ago

That can work-- we should engage in creative destruction, the administrative state did restrict economic growth, and it did create carve-outs out of the Constitution.

The highest level of economic growth (GDP), and total factor productivity growth, was between 1929 and 1973. It was also the time period when income inequality plummeted (post Gilded Age).

All three metrics have gone down hill since 1980 and the mainstreaming of neo-con economic thinking.

rufus_foreman2• 10 months ago

> The highest level of economic growth (GDP), and total factor productivity growth, was between 1929 and 1973

That's also the time period that immigration to the US was at its lowest. The Immigration Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants allowed. That law was reversed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Only 5% of the population were immigrants by the 1970 census, the lowest in US history. It's close to 15% now, a level which hasn't been reached since around 1900.

Income inequality plummeted because immigrant labor wasn't allowed to enter the US to drive down the wages of US workers.

H1B labor drives down the wages of US workers. Illegal immigrant labor drives down the wages of US workers. If you care about income inequality, then maybe consider supporting enforcing the immigration laws, and maybe consider supporting ending the H1B and other programs that drive down the wages of US workers and increase income inequality.

txru3• 10 months ago

Hmm, the rigorous systems of measure for GDP were only pioneered by Clark and Kuznets in the 30s and collected widely in the 40s. There were measures before then but they had much less rigor. I imagine the 1880s-mid 1920s were pretty impressive. Ditto for the 1830s-late 1850s.

What’s more, that time period includes recovery from the crashes of the early 30s, the massive war production of the 40s, and the massive boost that was having the rest of the world’s manufacturing and demand still in ruins in the 50s and 60s.

You could be right— but the data sure is confounded.

ckemere2• 10 months ago

Lots of arguments back and forth about the politics of government workers. But perhaps the biggest argument against the “creative destruction is good” might be that it favors hiring workers who like to leave a lot of the details up to someone else. But the “someone else” people (who like stable, rule/process oriented organizations) will be missing in the asymptomatic solution? (Contrast with an org with stable, rule/process development, where an asymptomatic solution exists?)

johnohara• 10 months ago

The real shame in all of this is the fact that buried deep within the 100k are workers who actually know a thing or two about how things actually work, have the experience and knowledge to get things done, have a pretty good idea how to improve the processes and policies, have chosen to do their assigned duties correctly, but have probably had limited success trying to change things.

So they're getting out because "it's time I guess. Not much else I can do."

rsynnott2• 10 months ago

Speaking to Newsweek, Scott Lucas, who teaches international politics at University College Dublin

It perhaps says a lot about the current situation in academia in the US that they had to go _outside the US_ (albeit to an American working outside the US) for comment.

stefap2• 10 months ago

What i have seen is that those who resigned had 20+ years experience and younger folks stayed. So it was a bit of a brain drain, at least from my limited interaction with the three letter agencies.

Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

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