The Trump administration cost the American taxpayer $11 billion by telling workers not to work under Elon Musk-inspired efforts to gut the federal workforce last year, a report found.

The Office of Personnel Management initiated the Deferred Resignation Program on January 28, 2025, after Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sent the now-infamous “fork in the road” email to federal employees, allowing them to resign and continue to receive pay through September 30, 2025.

It resulted in nearly 140,000 federal workers being paid not to work for weeks or, in most cases, months, the cost totaled between $11.1 billion and $15.1 billion through March 2026, government watchdog Public Citizen’s analysis found.