According to a new report from Axios, the Trump Administration has seen about 20,000 federal employees take the buyout offered to them last week, or around 1% of the federal government workforce. To put this into even more perspective, around 10,000 Federal employees resign or retire in a month without an unelected billionaire czar lightly threatening them to leave.
Musk was hoping to see the federal workforce reduced by up to 5-10%.
The buyout period, however, is not over yet as federal employees have until February 6th to accept the offer from the guy who's famous for not paying people the money he promised to pay them. The buyout offers federal employees full salary and benefits through September 2025, but unions have warned that the buyout is likely not legal and urged their employees not to take the poorly written offer that kept getting flagged as spam by government email filters.
The buyout was done as part of an Elon Musk-led effort to trim the size of the federal government and coincided with a hiring freeze implemented by the Trump Administration on his first day in office. Many have argued that the buyout offered is not fully legal until it is explicitly authorized by Congress, and as a result, employees who take the buyout could end up not being paid if the Administration decides against it (if they ever even decided to pay it in the first place).
Here are some thoughts from employees on r/fednews:
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