Report: 10% of SEC Employees Accept Offers to Leave Agency
About 10% of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) employees — 500 out of about 5,000 — have reportedly accepted buyouts or deferred-resignation offers and will leave the agency.
The number may climb higher as more people accept buyouts before a Friday (March 21) deadline, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing unnamed sources.
Some of the more significant departures have taken place in the SEC’s divisions of enforcement, exams and the office of the general counsel, according to the report.
Reached by PYMNTS, an SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the report.
The Commission is also cutting costs by ending the leases for its offices in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and the General Services Administration is considering doing the same with the SEC’s office in Chicago, per the report.
Reuters reported Friday that more than 700 SEC staffers have agreed to leave the agency since late January, when the Trump administration, as part of its efforts to downsize the federal government, first offered to compensate workers if they depart.
The number is “sure to rise” as more people accept the latest incentives to resign, which expire Friday, the report said.
It was reported March 3 that the SEC was participating in the Trump administration’s effort to reduce the size of the federal government by offering eligible Commission employees a $50,000 incentive to resign or retire.
The voluntary separation incentive or voluntary early retirement program was being offered to eligible employees who resign, transfer to another agency or immediately retire.
In February, it was reported that mass government layoffs had begun under the White House’s plan to shrink the federal bureaucracy and that they primarily targeted recently hired workers still on probation across a number of agencies.
Friday’s reports of employees’ departures from the SEC came on the same day that the Small Business Administration (SBA) said it will reduce its workforce by 43%, eliminating about 2,700 of its current 6,500 positions, and refocus its resources on its “core missions.”
These cuts will reduce the SBA to the staffing levels it had before the pandemic, during the first term of President Donald Trump, the agency said in a Friday press release.
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