GAO finds $9.5 B surge in paid admin leave tied to deferred resignations

The Office of Personnel Management's 2025 directive to place employees on paid administrative leave while they await resignation or retirement generated $9.5 billion in salary costs, a sixfold increase from 2023. The directive applies to all federal agencies that use paid administrative leave for workforce flexibility.

GAO's review of payroll data from 76 agencies - including 19 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies that represent roughly 95 percent of the civilian workforce - found a 435 percent rise in paid administrative leave use between 2023 and 2025. GAO estimates that about $6.7 billion of the 2025 costs are linked directly to the deferred resignation program.

The report also identified reporting flaws: agencies recorded 144 percent more paid administrative leave in pay periods that included a public holiday, despite guidance that holidays should not be counted as such. OPM has not committed to retroactively correcting these historical errors, leaving the public data potentially overstated.

GAO concluded that OPM lacks a mechanism to isolate paid administrative leave used for workforce-reduction efforts, hindering the ability of federal leaders to assess whether cost-saving goals are being met. To improve transparency, GAO recommended that OPM publicly disclose any remaining data reliability issues and add a new leave category in the Enterprise Human Resources Integration payroll system for workforce-reduction leave. OPM has marked both recommendations as open.

If unaddressed, the inflated leave figures could obscure the true short-term costs of workforce-reduction initiatives and impede informed decision-making by policymakers and taxpayers.