Is Donald Trump's government planning to raise retirement age? Here's the truth

Donald Trump administration proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the US air traffic control system Thursday that includes six new air traffic control centers and technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation's air traffic facilities over the next three or four years.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday that he also plans to raise the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers from 56 to 61, as he tries to navigate a shortage of about 3,000 people in that specialised position, AP reported.

He plans to give those air traffic controllers a 20 per cent upfront bonus to stay on the job. However, he says many air traffic controllers choose to retire after 25 years of service, which means many retire around the age of 50.


"These are not overnight fixes," Duffy said. "But as we go up - one, two years, older guys on the job, younger guys coming in, men and women - we can make up that 3,000-person difference."

Earlier, Reuters reported the federal human resources agency at the heart of billionaire Elon Musk's efforts to slash the federal workforce is poised to roll out software to speed layoffs across the U.S. government.

The software could turbo-charge the rapid-fire effort to downsize the government at a time when a number of larger federal agencies are preparing to execute plans for mass layoffs of tens of thousands of workers.

Some 260,000 government workers already have accepted buyouts, early retirement or been laid off since Republican President Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January, according to a Reuters tally. The process has been far from smooth. Some workers were mistakenly fired and had to be rehired.

The software is an updated version of a decades-old Pentagon program, known as AutoRIF, that had been little used in recent years.

Under direction from Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), software developers at the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management (OPM) have created a more user-friendly web-based version over the past few months that provides targets for layoffs much more quickly than the current labor-intensive manual process, four sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The program is poised to be rolled out to the agencies by OPM just as Musk steps back from DOGE, which has driven the downsizing effort, to focus more on Tesla and his other companies.

FAQs

Q1. What is full form of DOGE?
A1. The full form of DOGE is Department of Government Efficiency.

Q2. Who is heading DOGE?
A2. Elon Musk is heading Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).