[Source: 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 and other federal agencies have been looking at ways to cut staff and costs to meet demands from President Donald Trump’s 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.

Trump’s Republican administration and senior adviser and billionaire Elon Musk are seeking to remake a federal workforce they call 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.

In a separate memo sent to staff on Monday, Johnson told employees the General Services Administration – a separate agency that handles leases across the federal government – has decided to terminate the SEC’s leases for its Los Angeles and Philadelphia offices.

GSA has also notified the agency of a plan to cancel the Chicago office’s lease, but SEC said terms of that agreement do not allow for a unilateral move “without significant financial penalties”, according to the March 3 memo seen by Reuters.

“To be clear, these lease terminations are not associated with any reorganization or reduction in force plan regarding SEC personnel,” Johnson said in the email.

The SEC separately 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 allow permanent employees to resign, transfer to another agency or retire immediately, Friday’s memo said.

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