Trump administration likely to shed 300,000 workers in 2025: OPM director

By the end of 2025, the Trump administration will likely have shed around 300,000 workers, Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor told Reuters on Thursday.

The mass departures, which Kupor claimed were largely accounted for by voluntary buyouts rather than firings, would constitute a 12.5 percent reduction of the federal workforce from when President Trump was inaugurated in January.

“I cannot force people to lay people off,” Kupor told the outlet.

In February, the Trump administration offered a buyout to federal employees promising eight months of compensation, then expecting between five and 10 percent to elect to leave.

Reuters reported in July that around 154,000 federal employees, or around 6.7 percent of the federal workforce, have taken the buyout.

As of May, The New York Times had tracked nearly 60,000 other federal employees who had been cut or laid off (although some have been reinstated as various legal challenges grind through the courts). The outlet also estimated another 150,000 planned reductions across various agencies.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), once led by billionaire Elon Musk, has led the administration’s aggressive efforts, swarming into agencies and attempting to gain access to data.

The temporary agency’s momentum, however, has slowed in recent months with the departure of Musk in a fiery dispute with Trump, as well as various court orders blocking parts of its agenda — some of which DOGE has then successfully appealed.

Kupor was confirmed to be the head of the Office of Personnel Management in July. He was formerly a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the powerful Silicon Valley venture capital firm whose founders have become top supporters of the president.