The US government paid federal workers $9.5bn not to work in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s attempts to shrink the federal workforce.

As part of efforts by the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), spearheaded by Elon Musk, federal agencies’ use of paid administrative leave rose 435% from 2023 to 2025 – costing six times what the government spent in 2023 – according to a new report released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent watchdog.

Of the $9.5bn paid to federal workers, $6.7bn was associated with the deferred resignation 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,” the GAO said.

It added: “The number of workdays of paid administrative leave reported increased from about 4m workdays and 4.4m workdays in calendar years 2023 and 2024, respectively, to about 21.6m workdays in 2025.”

About 70% of the paid administrative leave used in 2025 was tied to the deferred resignation program, according to the GAO. Across the 76 agencies reviewed, 144,312 employees reported taking paid administrative leave under the program.

Since January 2023, the Trump administration has reduced the federal US workforce by approximately 355,000 employees, leaving many struggling to find new jobs while others have been rehired after the administration determined that too many positions had been eliminated.

Speaking to the Guardian, Douglas Pasternak, research director of Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project, described the federal overhaul efforts as “haphazard”.

“There are multiple examples of how this was not thought out,” Pasternak said, adding: “It’s very clear that the Trump administration gave zero forethought to these cuts and to these deferred resignation programs. They haphazardly went out and cut federal workers, and now we’re dealing with the ripple effects of that.”

He pointed to delays in social security check deliveries, longer wait times at Veterans Affairs hospitals for patients seeking critical medical and mental health care, and cuts to federal firefighters. Pasternak also cited reductions at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has since sought to rehire personnel.

“It’s a case study in mismanagement in how people went about this and it impacted everyone of all political stripes … To simply say we’re going to have fewer workers and therefore less costs is not the way to look at this. You need to look at it in a more sophisticated way, like what do those workers actually do? How do they improve the government? How do they actually help … provide critical resources for the American public?” Pasternak said.

In response to the GAO report, Patty Murray, vice-chair of the Senate appropriations committee, released a statement condemning the federal layoffs, saying: “After promising to cut waste, Trump instead set billions upon billions in taxpayer dollars on fire to quite literally pay people not to do jobs they loved – from researching cancer cures to taking care of our national parks, and so much else.

“Trump spent billions to push out experienced and badly needed experts across government – this was the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse,” Murray added.