“Paid administrative leave usage peaked in July 2025 at nearly 3 million workdays; approximately 2.5 million of those workdays were associated with the deferred resignation program,” GAO wrote.
Government Accountability Office findings
The Government Accountability Office found that federal agencies spent nearly $10 billion placing more than 100,000 federal employees on paid administrative leave for extended periods in 2025 — a sixfold increase from two years earlier and 435% higher than the level two years prior. Roughly 70% of that expenditure, or $6.7 billion, was tied to the deferred resignation program (DRP), the report said.
GAO quantified the sharp rise in leave in workday terms: federal employees took about 4 million workdays of paid administrative leave in 2023 and about 4.4 million in 2024. In 2025 that number ballooned to 21.6 million workdays. The usage peak came in July 2025, when nearly 3 million workdays were logged; approximately 2.5 million of those workdays were associated with the DRP. GAO also highlighted a change in duration: in 2023 and 2024 fewer than 600 federal employees took more than 90 workdays of paid administrative leave; in 2025 almost 100,000 employees did so.
Deferred Resignation Program and OPM guidance
The DRP — described in the report as a Trump administration program — paid employees to stay home in exchange for their resignation by September 2025, or by December 2025 for those eligible to retire. The program followed long-awaited regulations from the Office of Personnel Management implementing the 2016 Administrative Leave Act. OPM told agencies those regulations would not take effect until September 2025, and later proposed a new rule that would codify workforce realignment as a valid use of paid leave.
OPM’s then-current guidance for agencies considering a deferred resignation program set a cap of 12 weeks for paid administrative leave connected to these efforts. OPM Director Scott Kupor had previously said the DRP would save taxpayers $20 billion each year — a claim GAO said could not be evaluated without accurate short-term cost data.
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See what we buildData gaps and the limits of the accounting
GAO flagged important reliability problems in the federal data about paid administrative leave. The agency said its cost estimates for leave tied to the DRP and other workforce restructuring efforts are “likely a modest overcount” because employees commonly misreport similar forms of paid time off — for example, recording a federal holiday or a doctor’s appointment as administrative leave related to workforce restructuring. Compounding that, OPM has not established a dedicated payroll leave category for workforce-reduction related paid leave.
Because payroll systems did not have a distinct code for leave tied to workforce reductions, GAO wrote, policymakers cannot accurately determine whether the administration’s workforce reductions are actually reducing the cost of government. “[W]ithout an accurate understanding of how much paid administrative leave costs the federal government, there is no way to accurately determine to what extent the government-wide cost-savings goal is being met,” the report said.
OPM response: creating a new leave category
GAO recommended that OPM acknowledge the data reliability issues in its public-facing paid leave data and create a new category in federal payroll systems to report workforce-reduction related paid leave. In response, OPM reversed course and said it would begin the process of creating a new paid administrative leave category to better track usage and reasoning.
“OPM agrees that a dedicated administrative leave data element for workforce reduction efforts would enable more timely reporting on its use and simplify future analysis,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote. “OPM will begin the process of developing a new paid administrative leave category focused on workforce reduction efforts, in coordination with agencies and payroll service providers.”
What this means for policymakers, federal HR leaders, and taxpayers
- Policymakers: Without a dedicated leave category, GAO said it is impossible to reconcile short-term DRP costs with long-term savings claims — meaning legislative and oversight assessments of workforce reduction programs will rest on incomplete data until payroll reporting changes are implemented.
- Federal HR leaders and payroll managers: The decision to create a new data element will require coordination with agencies and payroll service providers and will change how similar absences are coded, reported, and analyzed going forward.
- Taxpayers: The DRP accounted for the bulk of the 2025 surge in paid leave spending; until OPM’s new category and related reporting are in place, the government will lack an auditable record to confirm whether the program’s claimed savings — including Kupor’s $20 billion-per-year figure — are being realized.
GAO’s report leaves a clear, practical next step: implement the new payroll data element and then measure. Only with that basic accounting can officials move from contested assertions about savings to verifiable conclusions about cost and consequence.
