75,000 Federal Workers Accepted Buyout Offer Before Deadline Closed

The Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building headquarters of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Washington, on Feb. 03, 2025. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—About 75,000 federal workers accepted the Trump administration’s retirement buyout offer, allowing them to receive full pay and benefits until Sept. 30 while being exempt from daily attendance rules and layoffs.

The figure was confirmed to The Epoch Times by a senior administration official after it was first reported by Semafor.

The 75,000 figure represents approximately slightly below four percent of the 2.3 million federal civil service workforce, not all of whom were eligible for the buyout offer. On average, 98,669 federal employees retired annually between 2000 and 2023, according to data compiled by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The difference is the Trump buyout offer—officially known as the Deferred Retirement Program (DRP)—was accepted on average by 6,250 employees each day during the abbreviated offer period of January 28 to February 12.

The average daily retirement total filed each day since 2000 was 274.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later on Thursday confirmed the buyout figure, telling reporters that the program was “going to save millions of dollars for the American taxpayers.”

Originally, the offer was to expire on Feb. 6, but a federal court challenge against the DRP by a coalition of organizations led by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents about 800,000 civil servants, extended the deadline through February 11. The court ended the litigation on Feb. 12, allowing the DRP to continue.

“Today’s ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a Feb. 12 statement. Kelley added that “AFGE’s lawyers are evaluating the decision and assessing next steps.”

There are two main federal retirement programs, with the older one, the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which provides an average monthly annuity of $5,447. The second program, the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) offers an average monthly annuity of $2,126.

There are big differences between the two programs. The much older CSRS is a defined benefit program that calculated annuities on the average of an employee’s highest three years of salary and guaranteed 56 percent of that amount each month.

The FERS program was launched in 1984 after Donald Devine, President Ronald Reagan’s OPM Director, negotiated an agreement with congressional Democrats who had majorities in both the Senate and House. The CSRS program had an unfunded liability at the time of nearly $600 million.

The agreement provided a lower guaranteed monthly annuity but enabled covered federal workers to receive Social Security benefits, as well as grow their ultimate retirement income by investing in the government’s Thrift Savings Plan (TRP).

All employees hired after 1984 are covered by the FERS program. The figures released today by the Trump administration on the DRP acceptances do not distinguish CSRS retirees from those under FERS.

The average federal employee salary, according to OPM data, is $106,382. The median average household income for all Americans is $75,149, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.