More than 317,000 federal employees left the government in 2025
- - More than 317,000 federal employees left the government in 2025
Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY January 1, 2026 at 12:06 AM
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More than 317,000 employees stopped working for the federal government in 2025, according to the Office of Personnel Management, giving a glimpse into how much the nation's largest employer has already changed its workforce.
The majority of employees took voluntary buyouts and early retirements as part of President Donald Trump's sweeping efforts to downsize the government, according to the agency. Tens of thousands of employees were also fired. Some were new or recently promoted workers still in their probationary period. Others lost jobs among Trump's crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs or refused forced relocations.
One of Trump’s first orders on Jan. 20 was the establishment of the "U.S. Department of Government Efficiency” to reduce spending and eliminate “waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal bureaucracy. Then led by billionaire Elon Musk, the group of DOGE employees initiated the mass layoffs and voluntary exits.
The federal government also hired 68,000 people in 2025, bringing the total number of federal civilian workers nationwide to about 2.1 million, according to OPM. During the layoffs and voluntary departures, the White House and OPM routinely declined to provide firm figures on how many workers were affected.
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor had previously outlined the future of federal hiring expectations in a November 2025 blog post. Kupor did not provide details on how much further the administration intended to cut the federal workforce in 2026.
Recently laid off U.S. State Department employees carry boxes as they walk out of the Harry S. Truman Federal Building on July 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.
"We want to make sure the government has the right talent focused on the key priorities of the administration and that we are eliminating wasteful taxpayer expenses in areas that are inefficient, no longer required, or in direct contradiction of administration priorities," he wrote in the post.
More: Federal workers' tough year has seen DOGE, government shutdown. Now they face new layoffs
Those changes include centralizing hiring processes to reduce the number of hiring managers, evaluating how the federal government uses the millions of people it contracts with to do federal work and examining whether federal workers roles are efficient and meet agency needs.
Sarah D. Wire covers national politics for USA TODAY and can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: More than 317,000 federal employees left US government in 2025
Source: “AOL Money”
