EPA spent $200 million for staff not to work
EPA paid staffers roughly $200 million to not work last year as part of its effort to ultimately slash the agency’s workforce by thousands of employees. Records obtained by POLITICO reveal the toll of President Donald Trump’s campaign to reduce and reshape the government at EPA, sending workers home, with pay — many for months. That included those who took the “deferred resignation” offer, others who had been assigned environmental justice work, and still more who had signed an open dissent letter critical of the administration.
In total, 2,945 EPA employees were on paid leave at some point between Trump’s second inauguration and the end of the last year, the records, released via a Freedom of Information Act appeal, show. The agency had started 2025 with over 16,000 employees. EPA paid $199,511,342.10 in total salary to those employees, many of whom never returned to the agency. The cost of benefits was not included in that tally.