The General Services Administration, which manages offices and real estate for the federal government, has reportedly asked hundreds of employees who were laid off during the Trump administration’s DOGE cost-cutting blitz to return to work.
Earlier this year, thousands of GSA employees were pushed to retire or resign by DOGE, a program initiated by billionaire Elon Musk with the official goal of increasing efficiency and implementing massive staffing reductions in the federal government. Hundreds more employees were laid off starting in March, with many being paid to stay home. Now GSA has offered some of those laid off workers their jobs back, giving them until October 6 to decide. Many of those who return will have essentially received seven-month paid vacations.
The rehirings come as GSA struggles with internal problems, some of which have been costly. As DOGE pushed to both fire workers and terminate office leases, expenses climbed due to layoff costs and penalties imposed when leases were broken or had to be renegotiated. The agency started the year with 12,000 employees but has not provided current staffing levels.
“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official, told the Associated Press. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.”
The situation at GSA highlights the chaotic nature of the DOGE effort, which failed to achieve Musk’s initial goal of slashing $2 trillion in government spending through the elimination of “waste, fraud and abuse,” even as it diminished the functionality of various federal agencies. Critics charge that the promised savings were always overblown, and that Musk may have had more nefarious motives including gaining access to sensitive data and wrecking the government for ideological reasons.
A separate report about the Social Security Administration Wednesday provides another example. In the name of cost-cutting and efficiency, DOGE reduced the agency’s workforce by 12%. As a result, SSA employees report that the agency has become less efficient and capable, forcing beneficiaries to wait longer to receive assistance.
“In my 24 years, I have never seen it so bad to the point that a lot of us are medicated,” one SSA worker told The New York Times. “We openly talk about it. We joke about it, because what else can you do?”