The government is paying 154,000 people not to work
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
This spring, the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service drastically reduced the federal workforce, all in the name of cost-cutting. This included making a “deferred resignation” offer to government workers, offering to pay them through at least the end of September if they resigned their positions.
Post reporter Meryl Kornfield and colleagues have been trying for months to find out exactly how many federal employees took these buyouts. Last week, they reported for the first time that the government is now paying more than 154,000 people not to work.
Colby Itkowitz speaks with Meryl about how she and her colleagues uncovered this number, how the Trump administration defends its claims of cost-cutting, and how former federal workers are feeling as they continue to earn a paycheck for work they are not doing.
Today’s show was produced by Peter Bresnan. It was edited by Maggie Penman and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Brian Griffin worked for the Department of Agriculture for almost 30 years. |
| 0:05.0 | When I first started, I was an inspector for orange juice in the state of Florida. |
| 0:11.0 | And it evolved over the years. I moved around to other locations and inspected different commodities. |
| 0:18.0 | Eventually, he ended up in Hawaii, where he worked remotely. He's 63. He planned to |
| 0:23.5 | retire soon, but he loved his job. It was a lot of fun. It was interesting. There was a good group of |
| 0:28.7 | people that we were with. So, yeah, it was a good job. Then Donald Trump came back into office. |
| 0:35.8 | The second Trump administration has taken drastic steps |
| 0:38.5 | to reshape and reduce the federal workforce. That has included offering millions of government |
| 0:43.5 | employees a deferred resignation, basically letting them resign, but keep getting paid. |
| 0:49.9 | Brian heard the administration was threatening to move remote workers like him back to the office. |
| 0:54.7 | And to get to an office for his specific sub-agency, that was not going to be convenient. |
| 0:59.4 | The closest office to where I'm located is in California. |
| 1:03.7 | It was just all the unknowns and the stress of that and the stress of everybody you work with is under that same cloud of unknown |
| 1:15.6 | things that are going to happen to them. So for Brian, the choice was obvious. Take the money |
| 1:22.4 | and stop working. You certainly can't complain. It's like a weekend 3865, right? I do your typical |
| 1:33.3 | retired stuff, putter around the house, yard work, things like that. It's a perfect environment |
| 1:38.6 | out here for that, so no problem. Brian has now been on leave since May, still drawing on his $132,000 a year salary till the end of September. |
| 1:48.5 | And Brian is just one of thousands of people who the government is paying to not work. |
| 1:56.0 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. |
| 1:59.0 | I'm Colby Echowitz. It's Monday, August 4th. |
| 2:02.6 | Today we hear from my colleague Merrill Cornfield. She's been reporting on the fallout of the federal |
| 2:07.0 | government's downsizing. Merrill walks us through the post reporting on just how many people are |
... |
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