Federal agencies paid $9.5 billion in administrative-leave salaries in 2025, with $6.7 billion going to deferred resignations.

A Government Accountability Office review found federal agencies spent $9.5 billion paying employees on administrative leave in 2025, up from an annual average of $1.0 billion from fiscal 2011 to 2013, driven by workforce buyouts. The mechanism. On Jan. 28, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management directed agencies to eliminate duties for staff accepting deferred resignations and keep them on paid administrative leave through Sept. 30. The blind spot. Because OPM recorded buyout leave under the same payroll code as routine absences like jury duty, auditors had to back-calculate the buyout cost from contractor records rather than agency ledgers. Still open. OPM agreed to establish a dedicated tracking code for future workforce reductions, but declined to retroactively correct historical data that overstated holiday leave from 2023 to early 2025.

What the deferred resignation program paid individual participants across agencies:

• 154,000 federal employees were on paid leave simultaneously at the program's July 31, 2025 peak, roughly 6.7% of the civilian workforce.
• NASA buyout participants averaged $185,410 in annual salary, compared to $102,824 for Defense Department personnel.