100,000 federal workers dropped from US government payroll during shutdown week
Roughly 100,000 federal workers have officially dropped off the government payroll this week, according to the Wall Street Journal, after the Trump administration’s deferred-resignation plan kicked into action.
The exodus landed at the exact moment the government entered another shutdown, with more job losses likely still on the way. This drop is the direct result of a policy that allowed employees to resign months ago while still collecting their salary and benefits through September 30, the final day of the federal fiscal year.
The program had 154,000 federal employees sign up. Two-thirds of them stayed on the books until the end of last month, even though they technically no longer worked. That buffer expired this week. Trump’s team has made no secret of its intention to downsize the federal bureaucracy.
Now, the expectation is that the government will wrap up this year with hundreds of thousands fewer staff, driven by voluntary resignations, a hiring freeze, and layoffs that could become permanent.
During the shutdown, around 750,000 people have been temporarily furloughed, and Trump has warned that some of them will not be returning.
Layoffs pile up as workers take exit deals or get pushed out
The administration says this effort is part of a broader plan to overhaul the federal system and clean out what Trump called “unaccountable” employees.
Layoffs, buyouts, and early retirement packages have taken a heavy toll on civil servants, disrupting operations across the country and shrinking services the public depends on.
While federal workers make up a small percentage of the entire U.S. labor market, the losses are coming during a year already filled with job cuts in other industries like finance and manufacturing.
Ryan Sweet, the chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said this trend is one of the reasons the job market has taken such a hard hit lately.
And while these departures were voluntary on paper, many felt forced out. Cynthia Iglesias Guven, a longtime staffer at the Agriculture Department, said her work dried up quickly after the new administration took over and canceled her agency’s main programs. “Going into work every day was extremely tense,” Cynthia said.
Rick Beevers, who worked at the U.S. Army’s program executive office for aviation in Huntsville, Alabama, left in February under the same deal. Rick had spent two years in federal service, but a recent promotion had him classified as a probationary employee, exactly the type Trump’s team began targeting.
“It just wasn’t worth it,” he said. “There was a much better opportunity to find something else that wasn’t government.” Rick tried to get ahead of the job-hunting crowd and started applying early, and reportedly got interviewed at seven defense contractors but didn’t land anything until the end of September.
Job market crowds as former workers flood hiring platforms
While some former federal workers, especially in specialized fields, have secured jobs quickly, others are hitting a wall. White-collar hiring has slowed, and there are simply too many applicants competing for the same roles.
On Indeed, job applications from federal workers jumped 41.2% between January and September. But Frank Grossman, a career coach based in Philadelphia who works with former federal employees, says most people who took the deal haven’t seriously started job-hunting.
“Reality hasn’t hit for a lot of people yet,” Frank said. The shutdown is making things worse. Ryan Sweet warned that furloughed federal workers could now be listed as unemployed in official jobs reports.
When combined with the deferred-resignation exits, the next report might not be pretty. “A hideous employment report could be coming,” he said.
Research from business schools at the University of Virginia, Emory, and Stanford shows federal workers furloughed during shutdowns are 31% more likely to quit within a year.
Christoph Herpfer, assistant professor of finance at UVA’s Darden School of Business, said many workers feel like disposable pieces in a political game. He added that going unpaid for weeks only adds more stress and instability.
Cynthia, who had worked at USDA for over two decades, now runs a career coaching business that focuses on helping federal workers transition out. She said several local therapists even reached out, asking her to help explain why so many of their clients who worked in the federal government were showing up completely burned out.
Still, Cynthia isn’t sure she’s in the clear. She’s worried her pension could be delayed due to backlogs or short staffing.
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