OPM cements rule allowing paid leave for ‘workforce realignment’ reasons

By Drew Friedman

Paying federal employees not to work, after they agree to leave their jobs during workforce reduction efforts, is now an officially acceptable use of paid administrative leave, under final regulations published earlier this month by the Office of Personnel Management.

The new rules also allow use of paid administrative leave during reduction-in-force (RIF) notice periods, as well as physical fitness activities in limited cases. And agencies can now deny employees’ requests to withdraw their resignations while under a deferred resignation program (DRP).

“The regulations provide more transparency and accountability, provide a firmer legal foundation for allowing or prohibiting certain uses of administrative leave, promote consistency across agencies, clarify the authority of agencies and reduce potential disputes,” OPM wrote in its Oct. 19 final rule.

The regulatory changes effectively codify the Trump administration’s use of paid administrative leave under last year’s DRP, which used unprecedented levels of the leave category to pay federal employees’ salaries while they were not working in the weeks or months leading up to their official separation from government. About 144,000 federal employees left their jobs through the DRP last year.

While approving additional reasons for using extended periods of paid administrative leave, OPM’s final regulations add several prohibitions on the benefit as well. Those include barring employees in most cases from using administrative leave when sick leave can be used instead. The final rule, which takes effect Nov. 18, also limits the use of the leave category for investigative purposes, and narrows employees’ ability to use the leave type when serving as poll workers or poll observers.

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Roughly 70% of the government’s paid administrative leave spending during 2025 was tied to paying salaries of employees who opted into the DRP, costing more than $6.7 billion, the Government Accountability Office estimated.

Trump administration officials have claimed that despite its costs, the DRP will generate far greater government savings in the long term. In a recent blog post, OPM Director Scott Kupor said the DRP creates a more than 400% return on investment.

But many critics have said there is no concrete evidence supporting the claims of DRP cost savings. Instead, many argue that agencies lost experienced personnel and added to remaining employees’ workloads, leading to backlogs and increased costs in some cases due to the need to rehire workers.

“OPM’s speculative claim of cost savings is contrary to publicly available data demonstrating that deferred resignation programs have led to increased costs for the federal government rather than savings,” the American Federation of Government Employees wrote in public comments in July.

OPM’s final rule on paid administrative leave comes despite criticism from federal unions, advocacy organizations and other stakeholders who argue the Trump administration’s revisions exceed agency authority and sidestep existing procedures.

Some commenters on OPM’s proposal earlier this year also took issue with the timing of the changes, as OPM is finalizing regulations a year after the DRP was implemented. The National Treasury Employees Union called the process “backwards.”

“The proposed rule does not hide its overriding purpose: to legitimize policy decisions that OPM has already made,” NTEU said in public comments. “OPM created a new status quo with its administrative leave policies that it now seeks to legitimize with notice-and-comment rulemaking.”

Additionally, some said expanding paid administrative leave options conflicts with the intent of the 2016 Administrative Leave Act, which called on agencies to use the leave type sparingly and for short-term purposes. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) argued that the changes contradict the congressional intent of the legislation, which aimed to set annual 10-day limits for certain uses of paid administrative leave.

“A rule that reopens the door to months-long, effectively unchallengeable leave for employees facing a RIF reproduces the same harm Congress diagnosed and acted to end,” PEER wrote in public comments in July.

In 2024, under the Biden administration, OPM issued regulations to align with limits set under the Administrative Leave Act, specifically for use during employee investigations. But earlier this year, the Trump administration’s OPM said it “identified the need to clarify certain matters” relating to paid administrative leave — particularly as it pertains to allowing agencies to put employees on paid leave when looking to reduce headcount.

Robert Shriver, managing director of Democracy Forward’s Civil Service Strong initiative, argued that the Trump administration’s latest regulations circumvent the 10-day cap for “workforce realignment” reasons, rendering Congress’ statutory 10-day annual limit “largely optional and meaningless.”

In response, OPM argued that the statute does not define all areas where the 10-day limit should be set — instead, Congress delegated authority on the specifics to OPM.

“The sponsors of the Administrative Leave Act were concerned about costs associated with open-ended investigations of employees and did not consider a use of administrative leave that would produce long-term cost savings by facilitating workforce reductions,” OPM said.

In GAO’s report last month on the impacts of the DRP, it pointed out that due to data limitations, OPM does not know the exact cost of the DRP, and lacks the data needed to estimate the program’s total savings.

“OPM would have to offset savings with the cost of any rehires or overtime used, or even money spent on contractors that were needed to meet mission need,” GAO Director of Strategic Issues Dawn Locke said, while noting that productivity costs and efficiency gains must also be measured to fully assess the value of the program.

“Once OPM implements our recommendation to collect data on administrative leave specific to the DRP or other workforce reductions, they’ll be able to calculate these costs and savings more accurately,” she added.