The Trump Administration estimates that it will end the year with 300,000 fewer federal employees

The Trump administration aims to end the year with 300,000 fewer federal employees, comparing January to December. Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, referred to this estimate in an interview with The New York Times, in which he stressed the importance of the resignation incentives implemented.

Kupor, an author and partner at Andreessen Horowitz, was announced in December 2024 as part of the second step of Donald Trump by the White House. He joined as the top human resources official and the top official responsible for managing federal employees.

As he told the NYT, the federal government will end the year with 300,000 fewer employees, which would mean the largest single-year reduction since World War II. 

The official attributed the figure mainly to resignation incentives introduced by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which account for most of the departures. Even if they are no longer working effectively, most will stop getting paid in September, and others in December.

"The departures are a combination of employees who voluntarily took an early retirement or resigned and continued to get paid through September, as well as fired probationary employees and others who have  been laid off in agency reorganizations, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," they noted from the Times.

"Agencies have reported a total of 10,000 fired probationary employees, according to Mr. Kupor, and about 6,000 of them are already formally separated from the government. Others’ employment statuses are in limbo, in many cases because of lawsuits," they added. 

According to The Hill, the cut represents about 12.5% of the 4.4 million workers who were on the federal payroll when Trump returned to the White House in January.

On the Trump administration's next steps on personnel, Kupor said it's still too early to have a sense. "That’s a little bit of a T.B.D. That’s the one I think that we don’t really have as much guidance on right now," he said.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to shrink the size of the federal government, removing "waste and abuse."