The Federal Government’s Slow-Motion Train Wreck
The Trump administration has initiated what may become the most devastating dismantling of the federal workforce in modern history, not with mass firings, but with a carefully designed invitation to resign. The recently announced deferred resignation program, introduced via an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo, offers federal employees a lucrative off-ramp: full pay and benefits until September 30, 2025, with exemption from in-person work requirements, and many put on administrative leave. This is not just an incentive; it is a slow-motion purge, a calculated method to drain the federal government of talent and expertise while avoiding the immediate political backlash of forced layoffs.
Many will take this offer. It is, for all intents and purposes, a paid early retirement program with no strings attached. Facing mounting uncertainty, a hostile workplace environment, and the erosion of once-ironclad civil service protections, thousands of employees will see this as their best—or perhaps only—chance to leave on their own terms before being pushed out under harsher conditions later. Those most likely to accept the offer? The most experienced, highly skilled federal employees who know their value and have private-sector options. The ones with the most institutional knowledge. The backbone of the federal government.
The consequences of this mass departure will not be felt immediately. That’s what makes this such a dangerous, slow-moving disaster. On paper, the government will still have these employees on the payroll, but in reality, they will be ghost employees—paid but absent, receiving full compensation while contributing nothing. This will create a façade of normalcy, obscuring the full extent of the crisis. And then, in October 2025, the storm will hit.
The government will wake up to a crisis of its own making. Agencies will be hollowed out. The loss of institutional knowledge will paralyze essential services. The programs that millions of Americans rely on will be understaffed, backlogged, and dysfunctional. Taxpayers will be paying for a government that barely works.
Social Security and Medicare processing will grind to a crawl. The employees who handle retirement benefits, disability claims, and healthcare subsidies aren’t easily replaced. These are complex systems requiring years of experience to navigate. As experts walk out the door, the wait times will stretch from weeks to months. People who depend on these programs—seniors, disabled Americans, low-income families—will be left in limbo, waiting for an answer that may never come.
Homeland Security and intelligence agencies will be severely weakened. The analysts and cybersecurity experts responsible for monitoring threats and protecting national security will disappear, leaving critical gaps in oversight. With fewer trained professionals tracking threats, adversaries will have more opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities. Cyberattacks will become harder to prevent. Terrorism investigations will take longer. The risks will multiply, and the consequences could be catastrophic.
Federal law enforcement will suffer. The FBI, DEA, and ATF all depend on experienced agents who know how to handle complex investigations. If enough of them take the deferred resignation, cases will stall. Organized crime, drug trafficking, and corruption probes will face delays or be abandoned altogether. Criminals who would have been prosecuted may walk free, simply because there aren’t enough agents left to follow through.
Businesses will seriously suffer. A weakened federal workforce means regulatory guidance will be inconsistent, approvals will slow, and critical permitting processes will stall. Companies waiting on clearances, permits, and approvals will face indefinite delays. Infrastructure projects will be held up due to bureaucratic bottlenecks, stalling economic growth. Financial markets will see increased volatility as oversight agencies struggle to enforce compliance, creating uncertainty for investors. Without clear regulatory direction, corporations will be forced to navigate shifting policies blindly, increasing legal risks and operational inefficiencies. The absence of a functioning government will be an economic drag, not a relief.
When these failures start piling up, the government will try to hire replacements. But who will want these jobs? Who will step into a system that has just watched its best employees walk away? The reputation of federal employment will be shattered. Hiring will be slow and difficult. The government will be forced to rely on underqualified applicants who take the job as a last resort. Mistakes will multiply. The expertise lost in 2025 will take decades to rebuild, if it ever returns at all.
And through it all, taxpayers will continue footing the bill. They will pay the salaries of employees who no longer work, and then they will pay again for the inefficiencies, errors, and delays that follow. They will pay for a government that can no longer fulfill its basic responsibilities.
This is not a budget-cutting measure. This is not about efficiency. This is a deliberate erosion of federal capacity, carried out under the pretense of giving employees a choice. The choice, however, is an illusion. It’s a carefully designed exit strategy, a way to shrink the government without the backlash of direct layoffs.
By the time the consequences are fully visible, it will be too late. The government does not rebuild easily. The institutions that fail in 2025 will not recover in a year, or even in a decade. This is not a short-term disruption. This is a permanent shift, a dismantling of government functions that have been built over generations.
The administration will claim victory. They will point to cost savings, to fewer employees on the books, to a streamlined government. But what they will not say is that the services Americans rely on will be weaker, slower, and less effective. That when disaster strikes, the response will be inadequate. That when people need help, they will be met with delays and confusion.
This is a slow-motion collapse. A train wreck happening in real time. The people who see it coming are leaving. The people who remain will struggle to hold the system together. And the people who depend on it—taxpayers, businesses, the elderly, the sick, the vulnerable—will be the ones left paying the price.
Key Take-Away
The federal government faces a slow-motion collapse as experienced employees take deferred resignations, draining expertise and crippling essential services. This isn’t efficiency—it’s a calculated dismantling that will leave taxpayers… Share on XImage credit: Pavel Danilyuk/pexels
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky was named “Office Whisperer” by The New York Times for helping leaders overcome frustrations with hybrid work and Generative AI. He serves as the CEO of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Dr. Gleb wrote seven best-selling books, and his two most recent ones are Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams and ChatGPT for Thought Leaders and Content Creators: Unlocking the Potential of Generative AI for Innovative and Effective Content Creation. His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, USA Today, CBS News, Fox News, Time, Business Insider, Fortune, The New York Times, and elsewhere. His writing was translated into Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Korean, French, Vietnamese, German, and other languages. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist, with 8 years as a lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill and 7 years as a professor at Ohio State. A proud Ukrainian American, Dr. Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio.