Checking In On The Federal Workforce As The Government Shuts Down

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🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

The White House is continuing its mission to hollow out the federal workforce.

The Trump administration has signaled that it will use the government shutdown to prompt and encourage mass resignations and layoffs.

More than 150,000 federal employees plan to leave the U.S. government payroll this week. It’s the largest single-year exodus of federal workers since World War II.

For workers who opted into the deferred exit program, those resignations began on Tuesday. Workers who didn’t take the buyouts were recently threatened with dismissal.

We check in on the state of the federal workforce.

What happens now that tens of thousands of these employees are leaving? And what’s life like for those who remain?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:28.9	My parents are both federal workers with long, successful public service careers.
0:36.7	Both of them have decided to defer any resignations or forced retirements because the deals just weren't good enough, given their pensions.
0:41.4	Additionally, my parents both believe that they can make significant impacts within this administration. My worry is that they're going to go out quietly, be forced into retirement or even
0:46.4	fired with the shutdown. And I don't want that to happen. I'm really scared about what this
0:51.1	shutdown will bring and worried about what it means for my family,
0:55.5	as well as the future of our government. Thanks for that message. The government shutdown has begun,
1:01.7	and the Trump administration is continuing its mission to hollow out the federal workforce.
1:07.0	Here's the president speaking to reporters on Tuesday ahead of the midnight shutdown deadline.
1:11.8	Well, the Democrats want to shut it down. So when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs.
1:15.8	So we'd be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected.
1:19.5	And the Democrats, they're going to be Democrats.
1:22.0	More than 150,000 federal employees leave the U.S. government payroll this week.
1:27.4	It's the largest single-year exodus of federal workers leave the U.S. government payroll this week. It's the largest single-year
1:29.1	exodus of federal workers since the Second World War. Workers who opted into a deferred exit
1:34.6	program formally quit on Tuesday. Workers who didn't take the buyouts were threatened with dismissal.
1:40.5	Today we check in on the state of the federal workforce. What happens now that so many workers have left and what life is like for federal employees who remain at their agencies.
1:49.3	We get into all that and more after the break.
1:52.1	I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast. Stay with us.
2:00.3	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
	...

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