The Trump administration is set to oversee the largest mass resignation in US history on Tuesday, with more than 100,000 federal workers set to formally quit as part of the latest wave of its deferred resignation program.
With Congress facing a deadline of Tuesday to authorize more funding or spark a government shutdown, the White House has also ordered federal agencies to draw up plans for large-scale firings of workers if the partisan fight fails to yield a deal.
Workers preparing to leave government as part of the resignation program – one of several pillars of Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce – have described how months of “fear and intimidation” left them feeling like they had no choice but to depart.
“Federal workers stay for the mission. When that mission is taken away, when they’re scapegoated, when their job security is uncertain, and when their tiny semblance of work-life balance is stripped away, they leave,” a longtime employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) told the Guardian. “That’s why I left.”
The total resignation program is set to cost $14.8bn, with 200,000 workers paid their full salary and benefits while on administrative leave for up to eight months, according to a Senate Democrats’ report in July.
Trump officials argue this outlay is worth it. The Office of Personnel Management claimed the one-time costs lower longer-term spending by the federal government. It also criticized job protections of federal civil servants, claiming the government should have a “modern, at-will employment framework like most employers”.
A spokesperson for the White House claimed there was “no additional cost to the government” as employees would have received their salaries regardless of the program. “In fact, this is the largest and most effective workforce reduction plan in history and will save the government $28bn annually,” they added.
The total number of expected departures through the delayed resignation and voluntary separation programs, attrition, and early retirement programs is about 275,000 employees, the spokesman said.
Several thousands of additional federal workers have been fired as part of reduction in force mandates ordered by the administration. The mass exodus is the largest single-year decline in civilian federal employment since the second world war.
Federal employees who took the deferred resignation offer requested to speak anonymously in hopes of returning to the federal government in the future and to protect future job prospects.
They are entering a lagging job market as the unemployment rate in August 2025 ticked up to 4.3%, the highest since 2021, and only 22,000 jobs were added amid disruptions and uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.
“It’s a huge grieving process,” said a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employee who took the deferred resignation offer. “Myself and many others that I know really hoped that we would finish our careers with the government. We felt very tied, especially in the VA, to the mission.
“Many of us thought we could do better for our clients, for our veterans outside of the VA, and a lot of us were so burnt out from the six months before the deferred resignation that it was actually a mental health decision for many as well.”
Communicating why they left has been challenging while searching for a new job, the VA employee said. “The job market stinks right now,” they said. “It’s great to not be working 60 to 70 hours a week any more, but you also lose your support system from those that stayed, and from those that may judge you for leaving.”
An archaeologist at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and military veteran, said they “loved” their job, but took the deferred resignation out of fear and pressure from the administration. “I was forced to accept the resignation plan. “Not physically, or through any legal means, but through fear and intimidation,” they said.
They cited comments from Russell Vought, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, who said of federal workers last October: “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”
“This is exactly what happened,” the USDA worker said. “I was scared to go to work. Scared that the next day would be the day I would get fired, or barred from future service, scared I would wait too long to leave and not find a job, and just living everyday like a raw nerve.”
The public vilification of federal workers has pushed many to take the resignation program, the archaeologist suggested, as they were constantly inundated with threats of cuts and firings.
Another employee at the US Department of Agriculture was fired in February as a probationary employee, reinstated in April only to take the deferred resignation offer.
“At that point, I felt they could terminate me at any time,” they told the Guardian. “It’s hard to focus on your work when they can just send you an email and you can be gone, and they completely changed the terms of my work. I was hoping things would stabilize and there would be an opportunity to go back, but now it doesn’t look like there will be an opportunity.”
The American Federation of Government Employees and other labor unions representing federal workers filed a lawsuit that is still ongoing over the deferred resignation program earlier this year, alleging the buyout circumvents congressional authority, undermines statutorily required functions of government agencies in losing employees en masse, and was enacted with Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” said AFGE president Everett Kelley in February. “This offer should not be viewed as voluntary.
“Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”the threat of firings.
The Guardian
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