FDA to Cut Another 3,500 Employees Under HHS Plan
FDA will lose about 3,500 (18%) of its 19,000 full-time employees under a just-announced HHS restructuring in response to president Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Workforce Optimization Initiative executive order. This is in addition to the 1,000 agency probationary employees who were cut last month from its rolls. Many of those employees have now been placed on paid administrative leave while their terminations are challenged in court. The latest cuts are being made after FDA and other HHS health agencies were ordered to prepare a plan for a second round of “reductions in force” cuts that was submitted 3/13.
In a 3/27 letter sent to union representatives, HHS says the “probable” effective date for the cuts is 5/27. It identified those primarily affected as administrative positions including human resources, information technology, procurement, and finance. The RIF will also target roles in high-cost regions and employees in programmatic areas that have been determined to be redundant or duplicative with other functions in HHS or across the federal government. Reviewers and inspectors are exempt, says Steven Grossman, policy/regulatory consultant and blog author of FDA Matters (www.fdamatters.com). "Logically, the policy, compliance, data collection, and regulatory staff are most at risk, as well as those whose jobs might be centralized at HHS."
The department says that in addition to decreasing FDA’s workforce, it will also focus on streamlining operations and centralizing administrative functions. “This reduction will not affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers, nor will it impact inspectors,” it says, presumably because these functions are covered by industry-paid user fees and not U.S. taxpayers.
As a department, HHS is trimming its employees by another 10,000, which combined with earlier cuts will leave it with 62,000 employees — a 25% drop from the 82,000 employees with which it began the year. The restructuring will save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year, it says.
Additionally, HHS’s restructuring will consolidate 28 divisions into 15 new divisions, including a new Administration for a Healthy America, and it will centralize core functions such as human resources, information technology, procurement, external affairs, and policy. regional offices will be reduced from ten to five. The goal is to “improve Americans’ experience with HHS by making the agency more responsive and efficient, while ensuring that Medicare, Medicaid, and other essential health services remain intact,” it says.