The number of federal employees who left their jobs in 2025 will total about 317,000, according to the Office of Personnel Management, after efforts by Elon Musk and the Trump administration to reshape the government workforce.

In the most detailed official accounting to date, OPM Director Scott Kupor said Wednesday in a post on X that the overwhelming majority of those departures were voluntary. Approximately 24,000 separations this year were involuntary, including 17,000 reductions-in-force. Another 21,000 employees took early retirement or buyouts, and 129,000 left through what OPM characterized as routine attrition.

Kupor said the overall numbers show that the headcount changes following President Donald Trump’s return to office in January are much less draconian than critics suggest.

“None of this is to minimize the impact of anyone losing a job, but the ‘mass firing’ headlines do not in fact tell the full story,” Kupor said in his social media post.

The largest group of departing employees came through a deferred resignation program that Musk, who led the Department of Government Efficiency, called the “fork in the road.” About 144,000 took that offer, which allowed them to leave early in the year but still be paid through the end of September.

Of the roughly 24,000 employees who were forced out, 17,000 came through downsizing actions known as a reduction in force, or RIF, in addition to 7,000 probationary employees who by law could be fired at will. Some staff who were forced out are part of ongoing lawsuits to get their positions back.

Federal departments overseeing foreign aid, taxes, education, health and housing have borne the brunt of the Trump era cuts. A law ending the six-week government shutdown last month put a pause on further reductions at many agencies at least through the end of January.

At the same time the job reductions took place, the administration hired 68,000 employees as of the end of August, Kupor said — mostly in top policy priorities like immigration and border enforcement, with the Department of Homeland Security being one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Musk’s DOGE effort dominated the early months of Trump’s administration, but it never came close to achieving the lofty goals the world’s richest person initially touted. The $2 trillion in potential savings he framed as a best-case scenario was continually scaled back, with several estimates putting it in the tens of billions of dollars — a rounding error in a roughly $7 trillion federal budget.

At the same time, tax cuts backed by Trump and passed by Congress this year are expected to raise the U.S. debt load by trillions of dollars over the coming decade.

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