Thursday is the deadline for federal agencies and departments to give the Trump administration their plans for large-scale layoffs, and the details about how many people will be fired are expected to come out throughout and coming weeks.
The mass layoff notices come as the Republican-controlled Congress fights over funding the government to avoid a shutdown on Friday. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has ratcheted up tariff threats against America’s allies, including Canada and the European Union, and they have responded, in turn, with steep tariffs. The back-and-forth has sparked uncertainty among U.S. stocks – and fears of a recession.
In an effort led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department Of Government Efficiency aides, more than 100,000 federal employees have already lost their jobs in the last two months through layoffs of probationary employees, who are new to government work or recently moved between agencies or accepted a promotion. Another about 75,000 federal employees accepted the original buyout offer Trump extended shortly after he took office.
It remains unclear how many of the roughly 2 million federal employees spread across the country could lose their jobs under the new layoff plans, called a “reduction in force” or RIF. The memo ordering agencies to produce the reduction in force plans called for “a significant reduction.” Agencies can whittle personnel through layoffs, attrition, removal of underperforming employees, or renegotiation of collective bargaining agreements.
The Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Government Efficiency, and each agency will work together to review each agency’s respective Reductions in Force (RIF) plans, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. She did not give a timeline for when the reviews would be completed.
“Once the plans are enacted, in the continued effort of transparency, the Trump Administration will communicate them directly to the American people,” she said.
The White House said it will release a final number of federal layoffs from the reduction plans but not until it analyzes what was submitted by departments and agencies. No timeline was provided on how long that process might take.
There is no specific deadline by which agencies must deliver the news to targeted employees that their jobs will end within 30 or 60 days.
Some of these plans have already been put in motion. About half of Department of Education employees were laid off Wednesday. That same day the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began notifying 1,068 civilian employees that they were eligible for a buyout. Earlier in the week USA TODAY also learned that the Department of Veterans Affairs was laying off about 16% or 76,000 workers. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is laying off more than 1,000 people, or about 20% of its staff. Likewise, NASA told employees Monday it would shutter three offices, including the office of the chief scientist.
Although Trump’s efforts to downsize the government have focused largely on federal workers, it’s worth noting that the size of the federal workforce hasn’t substantially changed since the late 1960s, when there were about 2 million federal employees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The government has consistently employed between 1.8 and 2.4 million people over the past 60 years. Over the same period, the U.S. population grew 63%, from 203 million in 1970 to 331 million in 2020, according to Census data.
Federal employees work and live in all 50 states. Only about 15% percent live in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area. Layoffs of probationary employees have already resulted in protests around the country, including at national parks.
After a fiery hearing Thursday, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern California District ordered the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, and Interior to immediately offer reinstatement to all fired probationary employees.
The case, brought by federal employees unions challenged the Trump administration’s mass firings of thousands of probationary employees. This week, lawyers for the government refused to produce Office of Personnel Management director Chad Ezell to be cross examined.
Alsup had previously temporarily blocked the Trump administration from its mass firing of probationary federal employees, saying that the Office of Personnel Management acted out of bounds by telling other agencies to fire their employees.
“OPM does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire or fire any employees, but its own,” Alsup said in his Feb. 27 decision.
A group of Democratic state attorneys general on Thursday filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from dismantling the Department of Education and halt it from laying off roughly half of its staff.
Democratic attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia filed the lawsuit in a Boston federal court following news that the department plans to lay off more than 1,300 employees. Trump has called for dismantling the agency.
The lawsuit argues that the job cuts are in effect dismantling the department and will incapacitate components of the agency responsible for performing functions mandated by statute, “effectively nullifying those mandates.”
Contributing: Joey Garrison
(This story has been updated to add additional information.)
