Thousands of recently hired federal workers were fired February 13 and 14, as Donald Trump and top White House official Elon Musk escalated efforts to purge the federal workforce, the USA Today website reports today (Feb. 15, 2025).
The cuts targeted probationary workers across all departments. Federal employees in probationary status have typically been hired in the past year. Probationary workers are easier to fire, because they lack the bargaining rights that career employees have to appeal their terminations.
Terminations were government--wide: from the Dept. of Education and Small Business Administration to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, and the agency that oversees the nation 's fleet of nuclear weapons.
The Office of Personnel Management declined to provide USA Today total or estimate of how many workers had been laid off. About 220,000 federal workers -- out of a workforce of 2.3 million -- had less than one year of experience as of March 2024, according to the most recently publicly available date from OPM.
The firings intensified after Trump's buyout offer expired Feb. 12 night. That offer, given most people in the federal workforce , extended federal employees eight months of pay and benefits through September in exchange for their immediate resignations. About 75,000 federal workers accepted the buyouts, about 3.3 % of the workforce, below the White House goal of 5% to 10 % of workers taking the deal.
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