The US agencies hit hardest by Trump and Musk’s layoffs so far

From Revenue and Energy to Agriculture and Defense. In an unprecedented move, the Trump administration has initiated a massive downsizing of the federal workforce, impacting over 20,000 employees. Coupled with approximately 75,000 buyouts, this dramatic reshaping of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce appears to be gaining momentum, spearheaded by President Trump and advisor Elon Musk.

The administration has yet to release official figures on the total number of dismissals. The layoffs have disproportionately affected employees with less than one year of service, who lack the job security afforded to longer-serving staff members. Here are details on some of the layoffs at federal departments and agencies gleaned by Reuters reporters so far.

The Pentagon said on Friday it would cut 5,400 jobs next week. The cuts are a fraction of the 50,000 job losses that some had anticipated but they might not be the last. Darin Selnick, a top Pentagon official, said the agency will implement a hiring freeze and could ultimately reduce its 950,000-strong civilian workforce by 5% to 8%.

The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday started the process of firing 6,700 employees, a source told Reuters, largely affecting workers hired under the Biden administration as part of an effort to target fraud among wealthy taxpayers. Republicans opposed the expansion, arguing it would lead to harassment of ordinary Americans.

Overall, the tax-collecting agency has about 100,000 employees. Around 2,300 workers were laid off from the Interior Department, sources said, including about 800 people from the Bureau of Land Management, which manages millions of federally owned acres for uses ranging from oil and gas development to timber harvesting, recreation and cultural preservation.

Overall, the department employs more than 70,000 people and oversees 500 million acres (202.3 million hectares) of public lands, including dozens of national parks. The U.S. Forest Service, a division of the Agriculture Department which manages millions of acres of national forests and grasslands, is firing 3,400 probationary employees, equal to 10% of its workforce, people familiar with the plans said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday that it accidentally fired several employees working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak and that it was attempting to rescind those layoffs. Workers at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which supports agricultural science and technology research, and the Economic Research Service, which produces reports and data on the farm economy, have also been fired, sources said.

The extent of layoffs across the Agriculture Department, which employs nearly 100,000 people, remained unclear. About 45% of recently hired employees still considered probationary at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were laid off, a source told Reuters.

The Associated Press reported that nearly 1,300 CDC staff members had been fired, comprising one-tenth of the agency’s workforce. At the National Institutes of Health, 1,165 people, mostly probationary employees, were laid off, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.

Workers at the Food and Drug Administration were also let go, STAT News reported. The exact number of FDA staff members who lost their jobs was unclear. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, NIH and the FDA as well as Medicare and Medicaid, has more than 80,000 employees. Around 5,200 of them have lost their jobs, STAT News reported.

More than 1,000 workers were let go from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health and other benefits to millions of military veterans. The department was trying to rehire some employees who worked on the Veterans Crisis Line after Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth raised concerns, she said on X. Another Democratic senator, Patty Murray, said about 30 workers were rehired at an agency that operates a Pacific Northwest hydroelectric dam, after the firing of 200 employees caused a public outcry over the reliability of the power supply.

The department employs more than 450,000 people and oversees more than 1,500 healthcare facilities. About 700 workers have been laid off at the Department of Energy, the agency said on Wednesday. Sources have told Reuters that as many as 2,000 workers have been informed they were being laid off and that managers were told to provide evidence for why some of those should be re-hired.

On Feb. 14, sources said 325 workers had been sent notice that they had been laid off from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an Energy Department office that manages the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal and secures dangerous nuclear materials around the world.

But after a public uproar and a scramble by the administration to hire back some of these employees, fewer than 50 workers from the agency were ultimately purged, the Energy Department said on Sunday. Overall, the Energy Department has about 14,000 employees and 95,000 contractors.