Federal Agency Workforce Changes: Update for July 2025 to January 2026

Summary

What GAO Found Over the course of 2025, federal agencies took steps to reduce the size of their workforces in response to presidential directives. These steps included offering incentives for employees to voluntarily resign or retire, implementing reductions in force, and restricting hiring for most positions. Data reported by 22 major federal agencies showed that nearly 378,000 employees separated from these agencies during 2025. About 65 percent of those separations came in the second half of the year as employees who had taken a deferred resignation offer departed their agencies. By contrast, these agencies reported they hired a total of about 127,000 employees, including temporary employees, during the year. As a result of these actions and other factors, the total workforce across these agencies declined by nearly 256,000 employees—or more than 11 percent—from December 2024 to January 2026. Figure: Total Civilian Workforce at 22 Chief Financial Officers Act Agencies The relative size of the declines varied across agencies—from about 1 percent at the Department of Homeland Security to over 45 percent at the Department of Education. However, 18 of the 22 agencies had declines greater than 10 percent. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has broad responsibilities for collecting and sharing federal workforce data and has continued to update the website it launched in January 2026 to make such data available in various ways. For example, in May 2026, OPM added a tool to the website that allows users to create customized tables using data available through the site. Why GAO Did This Study GAO was asked to provide updates with quarterly data on workforce changes at the federal Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act agencies. This report builds on GAO’s February 2026 update (see GAO-26-108719), and (1) provides information on workforce changes at CFO Act agencies during 2025, including more detailed data from the second half of the year; and (2) describes OPM’s continued efforts to update how it makes federal workforce data available. To address these objectives, GAO collected data from CFO Act agencies on workforce changes during 2025, and information from OPM on updates to how it collects and presents agency workforce data. The Small Business Administration and U.S. Agency for International Development did not provide requested data. For more information, contact Dawn G. Locke at LockeD@gao.gov.