Carmarthenshire Council re-hired more than a quarter of staff who took voluntary redundancy or early retirement, but not before they'd been gone for at least a year.
Like all authorities it has had to cut the wage bill to help make ends meet, and offering staff a paid early exit - like in the private sector - is standard practice.
Details for the last three available financial years show the council spent a total of £7.47m on voluntary redundancy and early retirement costs for 273 employees.
During this period 72 former employees were re-hired, but only three on a full-time basis. The remainder were part-time or temporary positions.
A council spokeswoman said: "Employees who voluntarily leave under this scheme cannot work for Carmarthenshire Council again in any capacity, including on a casual basis, until at least one year has elapsed."
Staff departure costs for the latest financial year were not available but the council said only four former employees were re-hired in this 12-month period.
Swansea Council lost 513 staff through voluntary redundancy and early retirement between 2016 and 2019, with voluntary redundancy costs totalling £11.6m.
Only 16 of these staff have been re-hired - all part-time and temporary. A Swansea Council spokesman said most of these employees were taken on by schools, which were responsible for their own staffing arrangements .
He said early retirement or voluntary redundancy staff could not be re-employed by the authority within six months of leaving and they could not do the same or a closely-related role to the one they left.
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The spokesman added that the scheme was a very effective way of reducing the pay bill because it took just over a year an average to recoup the costs, with those savings embedded year on year after that.
The figures follow a Freedom of Information request by the Local Democracy Reporter Service.
Departing Swansea staff could receive 30 weeks of full pay and early access to their pension, although there was a period when they could receive 45 weeks of full pay as an extra incentive.
The spokesman added: "The benefit of our approach to early retirement and voluntary redundancy is that we can avoid compulsory redundancies as much as possible."
