The departures stem from the Trump administration’s deferred-resignation plan, announced earlier this year, which allowed employees to leave government service while continuing to receive pay and benefits for several months. According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), roughly 154,000 employees accepted the offer, with about two-thirds staying on the books through the end of the fiscal year, September 30.
A Shrinking Federal Workforce
The administration expects to end the year with hundreds of thousands fewer federal workers, the result of a hiring freeze, layoffs, and voluntary separations. President Trump has repeatedly criticized what he calls a “bloated” federal bureaucracy and has pledged deeper cuts tied to the ongoing government shutdown, which has temporarily furloughed around 750,000 employees, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“This is one of the reasons why the job market in the last few months has weakened,” said Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. “Federal cuts, on top of private-sector losses, are magnifying the slowdown.”
Though federal workers make up a small share of the overall labor force, the cumulative impact is significant. From manufacturing to finance, layoffs and hiring freezes have already darkened the employment outlook.
Workers Who Felt They Had No Choice
Many who took the buyouts say they felt pushed out rather than opting freely.
“It became unbearable to show up every day knowing your work no longer mattered,” said Cynthia Iglesias Guven, who served at the Department of Agriculture since 1998 before accepting the resignation offer in April. “Going into work every day was extremely tense.”
Another worker, Rick Beevers, 48, who left the US Army’s aviation office, said uncertainty drove his decision. “It just wasn’t worth it,” he said. “There was a much better opportunity to find something else that wasn’t government.”
Beevers, based in Huntsville, Alabama, began job hunting months before his resignation took effect. After several rejections from major defense firms, he recently secured a role with a smaller government contractor.
Fallout and Fear Ahead
On Indeed, job applications from former federal employees rose more than 41% between January and September, signaling mounting competition in an already tight white-collar job market. Career coach Frank Grossman said many ex-workers “haven’t yet faced the reality of what’s ahead.”
The looming government shutdown could make things worse. Furloughed employees may count as unemployed in official labor reports, which could send the October jobs report plunging, economists warn.
“A hideous employment report could be coming,” said Sweet of Oxford Economics.
Research from the University of Virginia, Emory, and Stanford found that federal employees furloughed during a shutdown are 31% more likely to quit voluntarily within a year. “It makes them feel like pawns in a political game,” said Christoph Herpfer, assistant professor at UVA’s Darden School of Business.
Coping and Moving On
Guven, the former USDA official, has since launched a career coaching business to help fellow federal employees navigate layoffs and career transitions. “I’m helping others survive what I just went through,” she said.
Still, she worries about delayed pension payments and service disruptions amid the shutdown. “Just in case,” she added, “I took a bartending class and signed up to walk dogs on Rover.”