This week marks a turning point for the federal government: more than 154,000 civil servants are officially leaving their jobs, the biggest single-year loss of federal workers since World War II.
Most of them had already stepped back months ago, but today’s the day their resignations formally take effect.
This exodus isn’t random—it’s the result of buyout programs championed by President Donald Trump, designed to shrink the federal workforce. Workers were offered payouts to leave voluntarily, with the not-so-subtle warning that layoffs could follow if they didn’t.
On paper, it’s about saving money and cutting what Trump and his allies call “government bloat.” The administration says the departures will save taxpayers around $28 billion a year. But inside the agencies, the story sounds very different: it’s about empty desks, abandoned projects, and a wave of institutional knowledge walking out the door.
Why it matters:
Experience lost: Experts say it takes years—even decades—for public servants to build the kind of deep knowledge needed to run critical government programs. Don Moynihan, a public policy professor, summed it up simply: “Much of the knowledge is walking out the door.”
Public services disrupted: The buyouts are hitting everything from weather forecasting and food safety to space exploration and disease prevention.
Union concerns: Worker representatives are warning of chaos in agencies already stretched thin.
Take the National Weather Service: nearly 200 staff members took the buyouts, including engineers who maintain forecasting equipment and veteran meteorologists. “It has caused massive disruption in offices throughout the country,” one union official said.
Or NASA: almost 4,000 people left, including some of the agency’s most brilliant engineers and scientists. “They are not being replaced,” warned the president of a union representing NASA employees. NASA insists it’s still pushing toward a “golden age” of exploration, but insiders say the talent loss is hard to ignore.
The Agriculture Department lost nearly 1,200 researchers—about 17% of its staff—including specialists who tracked deadly crop toxins. Health agencies like the CDC and FDA have also been gutted, with tens of thousands of cuts across the Department of Health and Human Services. Former employees say programs as vital as tobacco-use surveys for teenagers are struggling to continue.
To put it in context: Bill Clinton oversaw a bigger federal workforce reduction—430,000 jobs—but spread out over eight years, during a booming economy that created millions of private-sector jobs. This, experts warn, is different: a sudden, sharp cut that leaves big gaps in public services.
The administration frames this as taxpayer relief. Critics call it a brain drain that could take years to recover from. Photo by NASA, Wikimedia commons.
