Trump team backtracks on Musk-led layoffs, rehires hundreds of federal workers

Hundreds of federal employees who were laid off earlier this year under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are being called back to work as the Trump administration reverses one of its most aggressive cost-cutting drives.

According to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press, the General Services Administration (GSA) has given affected staff until the end of the week to decide whether to accept reinstatement. Those who return must report for duty on October 6, following what effectively became a seven-month paid hiatus. During that time, the GSA in some cases continued to incur high costs to maintain properties whose leases it had either slated for cancellation or allowed to lapse, pushing the financial burden onto taxpayers.

“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official who now represents property owners with government leases at Arco Real Estate Solutions. Becker explained that GSA has been operating in “triage mode” for months and said the decision to rehire shows that Musk’s downsizing campaign had gone “too far, too fast.”

The GSA, created in the 1940s to centralise the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces, has emerged as critical to the functioning of other agencies. Starting in March, thousands of GSA staff left under early retirement and resignation programs, while hundreds more were dismissed outright. Although many of those employees stopped reporting to work, some continued to draw salaries.

The decision to reinstate workers reflects a broader pattern. Several agencies that were targeted by DOGE’s downsizing have recently begun walking back the cuts. Last month, the Internal Revenue Service said it would allow some employees who had accepted resignation offers to remain on the job. The Labour Department has similarly recalled staff who took buyouts, while the National Park Service has reinstated employees it previously pushed out.

A GSA spokesman, responding by email, avoided detailed questions about staffing levels, the return-to-work order, or the costs of reversing lease cancellations. “GSA’s leadership team has reviewed workforce actions and is making adjustments in the best interest of the customer agencies we serve and the American taxpayers,” the spokesman said.

Democrats, meanwhile, have criticised the administration’s handling of the matter. Representative Greg Stanton of Arizona, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees the GSA, said the downsizing “created costly confusion while undermining the very services taxpayers depend on,” arguing there was no evidence the cuts had delivered any meaningful savings.

The agency, which employed about 12,000 staff at the start of Trump’s second term, had been one of DOGE’s central targets in its drive to root out what Musk described as fraud, waste, and abuse across government.

By Tamilla Hasanova