The Government Just Lost Nearly 378,000 People in a Year — and the GAO Put a Number On It.

For more than a year, the size of the federal workforce reduction has been argued over in headlines, press releases, and dashboards that rarely agreed with one another. On June 17, 2026, the government’s own auditor settled the basic arithmetic. The Government Accountability Office reported that nearly 378,000 employees separated from 22 major federal agencies during 2025.

That is the gross number of people who walked out the door. The agencies hired roughly 127,000 back in, so the net shrinkage was smaller but still historic: a decline of nearly 256,000 employees — more than 11 percent — between December 2024 and January 2026. The cuts were not spread evenly. They ranged from about 1 percent at the Department of Homeland Security to more than 45 percent at the Department of Education.

The mechanism that did most of the work was not mass firing. About 65 percent of the separations landed in the second half of the year, as employees who had signed up for the Trump administration’s deferred-resignation offer — the “Fork in the Road” buyout — finally left the payroll. Less than 1 percent of separations came through a formal reduction in force. GAO laid out the scale precisely, then added a caveat that matters: it still cannot say what all of it did to the government’s ability to do its job.

• ~378,000 — employees who separated from 22 major agencies during 2025, per GAO's June 2026 report · Source: GAO-26-108583
• ~256,000 (11%+) — net decline in the workforce across those agencies from December 2024 to January 2026 · Source: GAO-26-108583
• ~144,000 — federal employees approved for the deferred-resignation 'Fork in the Road' program · Source: Government Executive; FedWeek
• Less than 1% — share of separations carried out through a formal reduction in force (RIF), per GAO · Source: Federal News Network
• 45%+ vs. 1% — the range of agency declines — from Education's 45%+ down to DHS's roughly 1% · Source: GAO-26-108583

The headline figure comes straight from the auditors. In GAO-26-108583, released June 17, 2026, the Government Accountability Office reported that data from 22 major agencies showed nearly 378,000 separations during 2025 against roughly 127,000 hires. Net the two and the workforce at those agencies fell by nearly 256,000 — more than 11 percent — from December 2024 to January 2026. GAO was careful to frame this as the agencies’ own reported data, not an independent headcount, but it is the most authoritative accounting of the downsizing produced to date.

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“The total workforce across these agencies declined by nearly 256,000 employees — or more than 11 percent — from December 2024 to January 2026.”

Government Accountability Office — GAO-26-108583, June 17, 2026

The cuts were lopsided. GAO found that 18 of the 22 agencies it reviewed shed more than 10 percent of their workforce, with the relative declines ranging from about 1 percent at the Department of Homeland Security to more than 45 percent at the Department of Education. In the first-half companion report, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department posted the largest losses by raw headcount, while the Social Security Administration moved aggressively to shrink its own staffing — exceeding its publicly stated workforce-reduction target for the year.

Probationary employees — the newest hires, with the fewest civil-service protections — took the hardest hit relative to their numbers. GAO reported that probationary staff separated at an average rate of about 19 percent in 2025, against roughly 15 percent for the workforce overall. At the Agriculture Department, nearly 42 percent of probationary employees left, compared with about 30 percent of everyone else.

The single largest driver was a buyout, not a firing. On January 28, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management emailed the entire civil service a deferred-resignation offer titled “Fork in the Road” — the same phrase Elon Musk (then leading DOGE) had used at Twitter. Employees who accepted agreed to leave federal service by the end of 2025 while staying on full pay and benefits on administrative leave. GAO and agency reporting put roughly 144,000 employees in the program, and about 65 percent of the year’s separations clustered in the second half precisely because that is when those resignations took effect.

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The savings were real but contested. The buyout itself was not free: paying roughly 150,000-plus employees through their administrative-leave window carried a reported price tag of about $15,000,000,000($15 billion) — spending now to shed payroll later. The administration argued the deal would pay for itself many times over, with projected annual savings cited in the range of $28,000,000,000 ($28 billion) once the salaries came off the books. At the Justice Department alone, reporting tied about 4,000 deferred-resignation departures to an estimated $470,000,000 in annual savings.

The risk side of the ledger is where GAO grew cautious. The auditors stressed that, absent the reduction-in-force and reorganization plans agencies were supposed to file, they could not yet determine what the reductions meant for meeting mission needs. Critics pointed to early strain — longer Social Security wait times after that agency’s largest-ever annual decline, and a thinned IRS audit corps — while supporters pointed to a federal payroll that, by independent counts like the Cato Institute’s, had just posted the largest peacetime workforce reduction on record. Both can be true. GAO’s point was narrower: nobody had the data to grade the outcome yet.

A report this consequential is only as good as its data, and GAO said so plainly. The 378,000 figure rests on numbers the agencies reported about themselves, not an independent recount. Two agencies — the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development — did not provide all of the requested data, leaving gaps in the 22-agency picture. And because OPM’s own year-end tally and GAO’s agency-reported tally use different windows and definitions, the various published totals — 378,000 separations, a 256,000 net decline, OPM’s roughly 317,000 full-year departures, the often-cited 271,000 net drop — are measuring slightly different things. They are not contradictions; they are different yardsticks, and GAO was explicit about which one it was using.

The deeper caveat is about consequence, not count. Personnel management has sat on GAO’s High-Risk List for years, and the auditors warned that a downsizing of this speed and scale, executed largely through voluntary departures rather than planned reorganizations, leaves the government without a clear map of which capabilities it kept and which it lost. The 378,000 is settled. What it bought, and what it cost in capacity, is the open question GAO says it cannot yet answer.

The DOGE-era downsizing has finally been measured by the government’s own auditor: nearly 378,000 separations, a net workforce decline of more than 11 percent, and a reduction driven overwhelmingly by a buyout rather than by firings. The savings are countable and, by the administration’s math, substantial. The risk is not yet countable, and GAO refused to pretend otherwise — flagging missing data, two non-reporting agencies, and the absence of the reorganization plans that would let anyone judge what the cuts did to the government’s ability to function. That is the honest state of the record: the scale is now a fact, the price is roughly known, and the verdict on capacity is still outstanding. We’ll track GAO’s follow-on reports and update as the impact data lands.

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Last updated June 22, 2026