The Obama administration is paying tens of thousands of workers to stay at home

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last updated 8 January 2015

Over the past three years, the Obama administration paid 57,000 workers to stay at home while they were investigated for alleged wrongdoing, reports The Washington Post. About 53,000 workers were put on what is known as administrative leave for one to three months, while 4,000 did no work for three months to a year or more. The figures come from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, which is attempting to track such data for the first time.

The Post reports that the bloated amount of administrative leave, which amounted to $775 million in salary, is a product of massive bureaucratic inefficiency and abuse: