On January 28, 2025, the President offered to buy out any federal employees who wanted to leave. That sounds really nice since the pre-inauguration rumors were that DOGE would just fire folks.
The buyout is for 8 months of severance, a very generous offer. Let’s look at what that means in terms of cost to the United States government.
The cost of the buyout
There are 3,000,000 federal employees as of November 2024. The average salary is $101,610. Eight months of severance pay for that average salary is $67,740.
If 10% take the buyout, the cost to the US is $20 billion. If 20% take the buyout, the cost to the US is $40 billion. Wow.
Is that the only cost?
That is a staggering number but not the only cost that the United States will pay. The loss of knowledge and insight of those who know how the federal government works will also be staggering.
What work will be sacrificed if employees opt for the buyout? Will the US government just stop doing what those employees who leave used to do? What if their job is important?
Remote workers
Maybe it isn’t quite so sweeping of a buyout. A Fox News article about the proposed buyout infers that the target is remote workers. They say:
Wow, only 6% in the office. That can be a barrier to creating a high-efficiency team. But is that the real number?
On January 21, 2025, USA Today stated that there were 228,000 full time employees working remotely, of the 2,300,000 total full-time employees. That means 9.9% of the full-time employees work remotely.
That is a very different number than what was reported in the Fox News article. The inference there is that 94% of the full-time employees are working remotely.
Why is there such a discrepancy in the reported numbers?
Ask good questions
We are at a turning point in our US history. Perhaps the government has become bloated and inefficient. But the narrative here is about the lives of US citizens. Not just those who work for the federal government, but those of us who rely on services that the government provides. Without people who support and process those services, we may lose them.
This is the time to ask good questions. Challenge numbers. Read for yourself from all sources and compare what you see. If they don’t match, ask why.
If we, as Americans, continue the complacency and ennui that led to 36% of the country not rendering a vote for our leaders, that will not end well.
