Don't Get Your Hopes Up That 75,000 Employee Buyouts Means Anything
The Federal civilian workforce is something in the range of 1.8 million people. From this study, 6% seems to be a reasonable estimate of annual attrition among Federal employees, or about 108,000 a year. In that context, the 75,000 signed up for buyouts is nothing. It could easily be made up almost totally of people about to leave or retire anyway. I don't think we are accomplishing anything unless we take at least a 20-30% whack out of the government work force, or from 350,000 to 500,000 job reductions. Anything short of that is almost pointless.
Now, it certainly could be Trump is planning much larger layoffs and the buyout is his way of saying, "look, I gave you a chance to leave voluntarily and you didn't do it." In the book (not the movie) the Godfather, Vito initially offers the holders of Johnny Fontane's contract $10,000 to buy him out. When they refuse, he ends up offering them $1,000 and a date with Luca Brasi. Perhaps that is the next step here.
At the start, this a year of people going early. Combined with severe hiring limits, that's most or all of another year gone.
The forest service cuts people are wailing about now were authorized under Biden but not carried out. The culling of probationary hires has always been authorized but managers traditionally haven't wanted to bother with the paperwork.
I'd rather see agencies and programs cut than see across the board percentages or numbers cut - some agencies and facilities are bloated, others are way understaffed. Some agencies work to help people, others stand int he way - the latter are the ones that need cut (from the news, some already are being cut).
I'm a federal employee who isn't worried about my job - my office is at 40% of allowed staff and we have a national reputation for helping companies get their projects in place, to the point that efficient policies and procedures that started in our office are now national policy.
75,000 buyouts here, 200,000 probationary laid off there, soon you're talking about real numbers. But the effort must be sustained to be effective. One month barely moves the needle.
DOGE has 16 months. Clock is running.
The total cost of the civilian federal workforce is $271 billion, much of which is concentrated in the defense sector. The federal deficit is about $2,000 billion, so it's not the cost of the federal workforce that is the source of the budget imbalance.
The 200,000 workers on probation probably wish they had taken the offer. The RIFs coming will be widespread. Those that didn't take the offer may decide "They chose poorly"
If $271 billion isn't that big of a deal, nobody should have a problem with making cuts there.