Sixty-five thousand have submitted resignations as part of Elon Musk’s “fork in the road” offer. But 150,000 voluntarily leave every year anyway.According to The New York Times, when the federal Office of Personnel Management initially proposed a “deferred resignation” package last week to entice federal workers to quit, Elon Musk estimated that the offer could attract 5 to 10 percent of the government’s workforce. However, as of midday Friday, with the original Thursday deadline to accept the offer now on hold due to a federal judge’s ruling, only around 65,000 workers had planned to resign, which is less than 3 percent of the total 2.3 million federal workers (excluding the military and Postal Service).
To put this number into perspective, about 150,000 federal workers, or 7 percent, voluntarily leave the government every year. Therefore, the number of resignations submitted as of Friday, in exchange for seven months of pay and benefits, would only be equivalent to five months’ worth of departures, many of which may have occurred regardless of the deferred resignation offer.
It is important to note that the federal government is a large workforce that already experiences significant turnover each year. In addition to workers who retire or quit, around 50,000 to 60,000 are terminated annually for various reasons, and about 3,400 die while employed by the government. These departures are typically replaced by approximately 240,000 new hires each year.
President Trump and Mr. Musk are also attempting to reduce the federal workforce by implementing a hiring freeze for certain positions. In terms of reducing the total number of employees, this hiring freeze may have a greater impact than the deferred resignation offer.
In conclusion, while the initial estimate of 5 to 10 percent of federal workers resigning may have seemed significant, the actual number of resignations received so far is relatively small compared to the overall size of the federal workforce.
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