Federal agencies spent an estimated $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave in 2025, with more than $6.7 billion tied to the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, according to a Government Accountability Office review.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
More than $6.7 billion in federal salary costs during 2025 was associated with employees placed on paid administrative leave through the Trump administration’s deferred resignation initiative, according to a government audit that found use of such leave surged as agencies moved to reduce the federal workforce.
The Government Accountability Office report, released Tuesday, estimated that federal agencies covered by its review spent approximately $9.5 billion on salaries for employees using paid administrative leave in 2025. That was six times the estimated cost in 2023.
GAO attributed most of the increase to the government-wide deferred resignation program established during President Donald Trump’s second administration as part of its effort to reduce and restructure the federal workforce.
The Office of Personnel Management sent executive branch employees an email titled “Fork in the Road” on Jan. 28, 2025, offering eligible workers the opportunity to resign while continuing to receive their salaries and benefits through the end of a specified resignation period.
OPM instructed agencies, with limited exceptions, to reassign or eliminate the duties of employees who accepted the program and place those workers on paid administrative leave until their departure dates. The government-wide program generally ran through Sept. 30, 2025, although some employees already planning to retire were permitted to remain in deferred resignation status through Dec. 31.
GAO estimated that about 70% of all paid administrative leave recorded in 2025 was connected to the deferred resignation program.
Approximately 144,312 federal employees at agencies included in the audit reported administrative leave attributed to the program, according to GAO.
The effects were particularly visible during the summer.
Paid administrative leave reached nearly 3 million workdays in July 2025. Approximately 2.5 million of those workdays were associated with employees participating in the deferred resignation program.
The number of federal workers receiving lengthy periods of paid administrative leave also increased sharply.
Fewer than 600 employees used more than 90 workdays of administrative leave in 2023. A similarly small number did so in 2024. In 2025, 98,758 employees reported more than 90 workdays of paid administrative leave, GAO found.
Across the federal workforce analyzed by investigators, the total number of employees receiving some form of paid administrative leave increased from approximately 750,000 in 2023 to nearly 900,000 in 2025.
The average amount used per employee increased from approximately five workdays to about 24 workdays over the same period.
GAO defines paid administrative leave as an excused absence in which an employee continues receiving full pay without being required to perform job duties and without having the absence deducted from personal leave.
Such leave can be authorized for several purposes unrelated to workforce reductions, including voting, blood donation, certain investigations and other circumstances authorized under federal rules.
The scale of the 2025 deferred resignation program made workforce reduction a major component of administrative leave spending, however.
GAO calculated that more than $6.7 billion of the approximately $9.5 billion in salary costs associated with paid administrative leave during the year was connected with deferred resignations.
The audit also found unusual cases involving employees who accumulated administrative leave extending beyond the equivalent of a full work year during the three-year period examined.
GAO identified 779 employees who reported more than one work year of paid administrative leave between 2023 and 2025. Their combined estimated salary cost was approximately $108 million.
GAO used 260 eight-hour workdays, or 2,080 work hours, as the equivalent of one full work year for that analysis.
The audit did not conclude that all of those lengthy absences resulted from the Trump administration’s deferred resignation initiative. The 779 cases span 2023 through 2025 and include other permissible categories of administrative leave.
The report also identified significant limitations in the government’s ability to calculate exactly how much paid leave has been used specifically for workforce reductions.
OPM currently directs agencies to record administrative leave used for workforce reductions within a broader category known as administrative leave for general purposes.
That category can include numerous other forms of excused absence, leaving OPM without a clean government-wide mechanism for separating leave used to facilitate personnel reductions from other administrative leave.
GAO said that limitation makes it difficult for federal officials to determine the short-term expense associated with efforts designed to create longer-term payroll savings.
“Without a mechanism to track paid administrative leave for workforce reduction efforts, federal leaders may not have the data needed to understand whether government-wide cost saving goals are being met,” GAO said.
Investigators also found separate problems with the accuracy of federal administrative-leave records.
GAO determined that agencies reported an average of 144% more administrative leave during pay periods containing a federal holiday from January 2023 through January 2025 than during pay periods without a holiday.
Federal holidays are not supposed to be recorded as administrative leave.
Instead, employees who receive paid time off for a public holiday are supposed to have those hours recorded as paid holiday time.
GAO said the discrepancy suggests that some holiday hours were incorrectly entered as administrative leave, potentially overstating historical totals.
The report identified additional possible reporting errors involving preventative health screenings, court leave, union activity and other types of paid time off that operate under separate legal authority.
OPM issued guidance intended to improve reporting but does not plan to retroactively correct all historical administrative-leave data already released publicly, according to GAO.
Those limitations mean the audit’s figures are estimates based on payroll information rather than an exact accounting of every administrative-leave dollar spent throughout the government.
GAO examined more than 18.5 million payroll records covering about 1.6 million employees at 76 federal agencies from 2023 through 2025. Those agencies represented approximately 95% of the civilian federal workforce.
Investigators obtained records from four major federal payroll providers and matched leave information with employee compensation data to estimate salary costs.
GAO then used payroll coding, OPM guidance and details of the deferred resignation program to estimate what portion of the leave was connected with workforce reductions.
The audit comes as the Trump administration continues efforts to reduce the number of federal employees and reorganize executive branch agencies.
One stated goal of those changes is reducing long-term government spending through a smaller federal workforce. GAO said evaluating whether those efforts ultimately save money requires federal officials to know not only the future payroll reductions but also the immediate costs incurred while workers remain on paid leave before separating from government service.
GAO recommended that OPM make two changes.
First, the agency should publicly disclose unresolved reliability problems affecting its administrative-leave data.
Second, GAO said OPM should establish a distinct payroll category specifically for administrative leave associated with workforce-reduction programs. Such a category would allow policymakers to identify those expenses without trying to separate them later from unrelated forms of leave.
OPM agreed with both recommendations and told GAO that it intends to implement them.
The audit therefore leaves two different figures at the center of the government’s 2025 administrative-leave spending: approximately $9.5 billion in total estimated salary costs and more than $6.7 billion attributed specifically to the deferred resignation program that placed tens of thousands of departing federal workers on paid leave.
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