WASHINGTON — The U.S. government paid federal workers about $9.5 billion not to work in 2025 as paid administrative leave surged during the Trump administration’s DOGE-era workforce cuts, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday and covered Wednesday by The Guardian, Federal News Network, and Government Executive.

GAO found agencies’ use of paid administrative leave rose 435% from 2023 to 2025 and incurred roughly a sixfold salary cost versus 2023. Reported workdays of paid admin leave climbed from about 4 million in 2023 and 4.4 million in 2024 to about 21.6 million in 2025. Of the $9.5 billion, about $6.7 billion — roughly 70% of 2025 paid admin leave — was tied to the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP). Across 76 agencies reviewed, 144,312 employees reported paid administrative leave under that program.

“Paid administrative leave for federal employees is an excused absence without loss of pay or charge to leave. It is a cost to taxpayers as employees receive full pay without performing job duties,” GAO said. The watchdog also warned that misreporting (including holidays and other leave coded as admin leave) and the lack of a dedicated workforce-reduction leave category can overstate totals — and that without clean cost data, claims of government-wide savings are hard to verify. OPM Director Scott Kupor told Federal News Network the one-time DRP leave cost should be weighed against recurring payroll savings he estimates at about $20 billion a year.

The Guardian reported that since January 2023 the Trump administration has reduced the federal workforce by roughly 355,000 employees, with some later rehired. Sen. Patty Murray, vice chair of Senate Appropriations, said Trump “set billions upon billions in taxpayer dollars on fire to quite literally pay people not to do jobs they loved.” Public Citizen’s Douglas Pasternak called the overhaul “haphazard.” Efficiency rhetoric meets an expensive irony: paying people full freight to stay home while agencies reorganize is not the same as a leaner government that actually costs less.

Dated Tuesday–Wednesday, Sept. 15–16, 2026: GAO $9.5bn paid admin leave in 2025; $6.7bn / ~70% tied to DRP; 144,312 employees; 21.6m workdays vs ~4m in 2023.

Sources