WSJ: The departures coincide with the government shutdown, which could bring another round of cuts.
The trims stem from the Trump administration’s deferred-resignation plan, launched earlier in the year, which allowed staff to leave the government and keep their paychecks and benefits for months. About 154,000 employees took the deal, according to the Office of Personnel Management, and two-thirds were paid through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Overall, the administration expects the federal workforce to end the year with hundreds of thousands fewer employees, attributed to a hiring freeze, layoffs and voluntary departures. Trump has also threatened to permanently lay off additional workers in connection with the shutdown, which temporarily furloughs an estimated 750,000 people, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Though some federal workers in high-demand occupations have gotten jobs quickly, many others face a crowded market and slow searches in a tough white-collar hiring market.
Federal workers’ job applications on Indeed rose 41.2% from January to September, according to the platform. But Frank Grossman, a Philadelphia-based career coach working with federal workers, said many who took the buyout options haven’t looked for jobs in earnest.
“Reality hasn’t hit for a lot of people yet,” he said.
The government shutdown could soon darken the job picture even more.
Furloughed federal workers may show up as unemployed in the part of the jobs report used to calculate the unemployment rate, Sweet said. Any new layoffs tied to the shutdown combined with the workers who took the deferred resignation program could mean “a hideous employment report could be coming,” he said.
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