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.