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- Posted March 28, 2025
Trump Administration To Cut 10,000 Health and Human Services Jobs
The Trump administration will lay off 10,000 workers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a major reorganization, officials announced Thursday.
The changes reflect efforts to cut the size of the federal government and follow Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vision for the agency.
Before the cuts, HHS had about 82,000 employees. Along with previous buyouts and early retirements, that number will shrink to around 62,000.
Two major agencies within HHS -- the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- are expected to lose about 20% of their workers.
“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.
The CDC will lose about 2,400 employees and focus on “preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks,” an HHS fact sheet mentioned.
The FDA will lose 3,500 employees, including workers who help ensure the safety of food and medicine.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will also lose 1,200 staff members, and 300 jobs will be cut from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In alll, HHS will shrink from 28 divisions to 15. Ten regional HHS offices will be merged into five.
Kennedy also announced the creation of a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. The HHS fact sheet said it will improve coordination of chronic care and disease prevention programs and "harmonize" health resources for low-income Americans.
“We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient,” Kennedy said. “These goals will honor the aspirations of the vast majority of existing H.H.S. employees who actually yearn to make America healthy.”
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 subagencies 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."
Democrats and health experts strongly criticized the move.
“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,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said.
“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,” said Dr. Anand Parekh, an Obama administration health official who is now the chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
People also voiced concerns about the FDA's ability to protect food and drug safety.
“This has the makings of a man-made disaster,” Xavier Becerra, who served as health secretary under President Joe Biden, said on social media.
“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," Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 18,500 H.H.S. staffers, said.
More information
Learn more about the role of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
SOURCES: The New York Times, March 27, 2025; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Fact Sheet and YouTube video, March 27, 2025
