By Chris Prentice
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is offering some employees $50,000 if they choose to resign or to retire under an early retirement program, according to an agency memo seen by Reuters.
The SEC alongside other federal agencies has been looking at ways to cut staff and costs to meet demands from the Trump administration. SEC employees have until March 21 to decide, according to a February 28 all-staff memo from the SEC’s chief operating officer, Ken Johnson.
The SEC declined to comment. The memo was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Republican Donald Trump’s administration and senior adviser and billionaire Elon Musk are seeking to remake a federal workforce they say is bloated and wasteful. The administration and the Department of Government Efficiency have removed more than 100,000 of the federal government’s 2.3 million civilian workers through a combination of layoffs and buyouts.
The SEC has also told directors of regional offices it plans to cut their jobs, Reuters previously reported. Last week, the agency told unionized workers they must resume working from the office in mid-April, a move the union said was illegal.
The SEC’s voluntary incentive separation and voluntary early retirement programs, according to the memo, allow permanent employees to resign, transfer to another agency or retire immediately.
(Reporting by Chris Prentice; Additional reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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