Part 2/7:
According to a Forbes article, the buyout was issued in a bid to shrink the size of the government. Of the two million who received this offer, at least 65,000 workers have already accepted, signaling the magnitude of this transition. The buyout proposal excludes certain military, postal, and National Security employees, and the plan to eliminate substantial jobs has recently been put on hold following a temporary court injunction.
As context, it is critical to compare this to historical layoffs. Previous significant layoffs include IBM's reduction of 60,000 jobs in 1993 and Citigroup's cut of the same number in the same year. Even with such historical precedents, the scale of this layoff sets it apart from others in the context of federal employment.