Trump Administration Announces 10,000 Health and Human Services Job Cuts

DLHA Staff Writer

Robert F. Kennedy Jnr., US Secretary of Health in President Trump's Administration. Image credit: US DHHS

March 29, 2025 – The Trump administration officially announced its plans on March 27, 2025 to lay off 10,000 workers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), effective May 27. 

This is part of a major reorganization, in accordance with President Trump's Executive Order, “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative.”

The announcement states that the “restructuring will address this (the President’s EO) and serve multiple goals without impacting critical services”

According to the announcement, the job cuts will achieve the following goals:

• Save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year through a reduction in workforce of about 10,000 full-time employees and a total downsizing of the full-time workforce employees from 82,000 to 62,000.

• Streamline the functions of the Department by consolidating 28 current divisions of the HHS into 15 new divisions that will also include a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA

• Centralize core functions such as Human Resources, Information Technology, Procurement, External Affairs, and Policy.

• Reduce regional offices of the Department from 10 to 5.

• Implement a new Department priority of ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.

• Make the agency more responsive and efficient, while ensuring that Medicare, Medicaid, and other essential health services remain intact.

The changes also follow Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) vision of ending chronic diseases epidemic for the agency.

“We’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said, acknowledging that it would be “a painful period for HHS,” according to a report from The New York Times.

Details of the announced job cuts in the different units of the HHS include:

• FDA: Approximately 3,500 full-time employees
• CDC: Approximately 2,400 employees
• NIH: Approximately 1,200 employees, across its 27 institutions and Centers
• CMS: Approximately 300 employees

In a YouTube video, Kennedy said that when he took over leadership of HHS, he found that "over half of our employees don't even come to work."

The department has more than 100 communications offices, more than 40 I.T. departments, dozens of procurement offices and nine human resources departments, he said.

“In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other," Kennedy added. "They’re mainly operating in silos. Sometimes these sub-agencies work at cross-purposes with each other.”

An email message notifying union leaders of the cuts said the job cuts would likely take effect May 27. It added that they were “primarily aimed at administrative positions including human resources, information technology, procurement and finance."

Critics of the job cuts, including Democrats (the minority party in the US Congress), health experts and workers' union leaders strongly oppose the move.

Sen. Patty Murray: (D-Wash.): “In the middle of worsening nationwide outbreaks of bird flu and measles, not to mention a fentanyl epidemic, Trump is wrecking vital health agencies with the precision of a bull in a china shop,” .

Dr. Anand Parekh: “Converting CDC to an agency solely focused on infectious diseases takes us back to 1948 without realizing that in 2025, the leading causes of death are noncommunicable disease.”

Dr Parekh was an Obama administration health official who is now the chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Xavier Becerra: (on social media): “This has the makings of a man-made disaster.”  Becerra served as health secretary under President Joe Biden.

Doreen Greenwald: “The administration’s claims that such deep cuts to the Food and Drug Administration and other critical HHS offices won’t be harmful are preposterous." 

Greenwald is the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 18,500 H.H.S. staffers, said.

The claimed benefits and fallouts from the job cuts remain to be seen.

Sources

The New York Times, March 27, 2025

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Press release, Fact Sheet and YouTube video, March 27, 2025

Published: March 29, 2025.

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