Trump Administration Offers Buyouts To Federal Workers. Read The Letter Sent To Employees.

Donald Trump, seen here signing executive orders on his first day in office, is offering many federal employees a buyout.

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• The Trump administration is offering buyouts to members of the federal workforce.
• Employees who resign from in-office work will have full pay and benefits through September, officials said.
• Some exclusions apply to military, postal, immigration, and national security roles.

President Donald Trump is offering buyouts to federal workers who don't want to stick around under the new administration, according to a letter sent to government employees on Tuesday.

The letter, which was shared by the US Office of Personnel Management, said federals employees had from January 28 to February 6 to decide if they would like to resign under this program.

Those who resign will receive full pay and benefits regardless of their daily workload and are exempted from "all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025," the memo says.

The webpage listed a deferred resignation letter that specifies that employees would complete "reasonable and customary tasks and processes to facilitate" their departure.

The resignation offer was available to all full-time federal employees except for military personnel, US Postal Service employees, those in immigration enforcement and national security roles, and other positions that were specifically excluded by an agency.

The letter said a recent order issued by Trump meant there would be significant reform in the federal workforce, which it said would be "built around four pillars." Those pillars were: Return to Office, Performance culture, More streamlined and flexible workforce, and Enhanced standards of conduct.

The memo also said that for those who choose to stay, the administration could not guarantee that their role or agency will not be eliminated.

Read the OPM’s full memo.

The White House did not respond to BI's request for comment.

After taking office on January 20, Trump signed several executive orders impacting the federal workforce as his administration, including the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, seeks to cut government waste.

Trump has ordered federal employees to return to the office, and moved to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at government agencies, ordering DEI-focused staff be placed on leave.

In an op-ed about DOGE published in The Wall Street Journal in November, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who temporarily co-led the effort with him, wrote that requiring federal employees to return to the office full-time would lead to "a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome."

"If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," they wrote.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, said Tuesday evening that the president did not have the authority to offer the deferred resignation to federal workers and warned them not to take the offer.

"There's no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work," he said, speaking from the Senate floor.