Politics

The Trump administration spent an estimated $9.5 billion last year on paid administrative leave for federal workers as it pushed to cut costs by shrinking the government, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday.

Agencies’ use of paid administrative leave jumped by 435% from 2023 to 2025, the report found, and salary costs from such leave rose sixfold. That coincides with President Donald Trump’s decision in 2025 to create the Department of Government Efficiency led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, which enacted mass firings and dissolved the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Much of the increased leave cost — about $6.7 billion — came from salary paid through a DOGE-era “deferred resignation program,” GAO found. Nearly 140,000 federal employees opted into the program, according to the Office of Personnel Management. It allowed for federal workers who agreed to quit in early 2025 to still be paid through September.