President Donald Trump’s administration is offering buyouts to federal employees to quickly reduce the government workforce. They don’t have a long time to decide: The deadline is Feb. 6.
The buyouts are for all full-time federal employees except for military personnel, employees of the U.S. Postal Service and those in positions related to immigration enforcement and national security. They would get about eight months of salary if they accept.
An email about the offer was sent Tuesday to more than 2 million workers, according to Katie Miller, who serves on an advisory board to the Department of Government Efficiency, a special commission headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tasked with shrinking the size of government.
Here’s what we know about the offer and the makeup of the federal workforce:
What is the offer?
In addition to receiving their salary and retaining all benefits during this time, workers who go along will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until Sept. 30, as the administration pushes to require employees to return to offices. The emailed offer includes instructions on how to accept: select “Reply” and “Type the word ‘Resign’ into the body of this email and hit ‘send.'”
What if workers decide to stay?
They will be expected to return to their offices full time, in keeping with the president’s push to end COVID-19 pandemic-era remote work. The memo says Trump “will insist on excellence at every level.” It also notes that the majority of federal agencies “are likely to be downsized,” and that “employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward.”
Can they return to government service?
Workers who take the buyout can apply for other government work in the future.
How many employees are there?
The federal government employed more than 3 million people as of November, accounting for nearly 1.9% of the nation’s entire civilian workforce, according to the Pew Research Center. The civilian workforce is about 2.4 million, excluding U.S. Postal Service employees and active-duty military.
The number of federal workers who are not postal employees or active-duty military has been slowly growing since 2000, but has mostly kept pace with the growth of the overall population, according to an analysis by Pew.
How long do federal employees stay on the job?
The average tenure for a federal employee is nearly 12 years, according to a Pew analysis of data from the Office of Personnel Management. The highest percentage of them, about 19%, have worked for the government between five years and 10 years About 15% have worked between 10 years to 14 years, and about 14% have worked between 15 years and 19 years. The numbers drop off after that. Nearly 9% have worked 20 years to 24 years, and nearly 4% have worked between 25 years and 29 years. A little more than 3% have worked 30 years to 34 years, and about 3.4% have worked 35 or more years.
Where do they work?
The largest chunk of federal workers, nearly 20%, are in the District of Columbia and neighboring Maryland and Virginia, according to the Pew analysis. California, the nation’s largest state by population, has the highest number, about 147,500, but that’s less than 1% of total nonfarming employees in the state.
Other big states also have large numbers of federal workers. There are about 130,000 in Texas, but that accounts for less than 1% of nonfarming jobs there; Florida has about 94,000.
What do workers say about the offer?
Federal workers only got the offer late Tuesday. The proposal was criticized by the head of the American Federation of Government Employees Union, Everett Kelley, who said the buyouts were more of an effort to pressure workers who were not considered loyal to the new administration to leave 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.”
