Members of the federal workforce will likely be happy to see 2025 in the rearview. The turbulent year brought unprecedented uncertainty marked by sweeping policy changes, workforce reductions, and high-profile initiatives that touched nearly every corner of federal service.
The year began with the second inauguration of President Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025, which launched an immediate shift in federal personnel policy. One of the first actions was a broad federal hiring freeze, effectively limiting agencies from hiring replacement staff while placing an emphasis on returning employees to full-time, in-office work rather than remote schedules.
Soon after, the administration signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and a workforce optimization initiative aimed at shrinking the federal workforce and restructuring agency operations. DOGE’s activities dominated much of the narrative around personnel policy, including efforts to eliminate positions tied to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs and reorganize technology units such as the former U.S. Digital Service.
A central feature of workforce change in 2025 was the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) launched in late January, offering federal employees compensation and benefits through the end of the fiscal year in exchange for voluntary departure. Ultimately, about 6.7% of the civilian workforce participated, with more than 150,000 civil servants leaving under the program. This contributed to a broader contraction of the workforce, with agency staffing levels falling significantly and some departments later seeking to rehire staff amid operational challenges.
This year, OPM took major steps toward modernizing federal retirement processing with the rollout of its Online Retirement Application (ORA), a fully digital system designed to replace decades-old paper methods and speed up how retirement claims are handled. However, OPM has faced an unprecedented surge of retirement applications in 2025, largely driven by the DRP and other workforce exits, resulting in tens of thousands of pending applications and longer processing timelines. While digital submissions are processing significantly faster than paper, the sheer volume of claims has strained resources and underscored the urgency of modernizing the retirement system for today’s workforce.
Labor relations also made headlines. The House of Representatives voted to repeal an executive order limiting union rights, reflecting ongoing tensions over collective bargaining and worker protections. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security invalidated the union contract covering tens of thousands of TSA officers, prompting pledges of legal challenges.
From sweeping reorganizations to workforce shrinkage and new strategic hires, 2025 was a year of dramatic transformation for the federal workforce, setting the stage for continued debate and evolution in 2026 and beyond.
