Trump administration begins sweeping layoffs with probationary workers, warns of larger cuts to come
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has intensified its sweeping efforts to shrink the federal workforce, the nation’s largest employer, by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.
Among the cuts, roughly one-tenth of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce is expecting to be fired.
The decision on probationary workers, who generally have less than a year on the job, came Thursday from the Office of Personnel Management, which serves as a human resources department for the federal government.
Even workers in the personnel office itself were not immune: Dozens of probationary employees there were told on a Thursday afternoon group call that they were being dismissed and then instructed to leave the building within half an hour, according to another person who likewise spoke on condition of anonymity.
It’s expected to be the first step in sweeping layoffs. President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that told agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force.”
Elon Musk, whom President Trump has given wide leeway to slash government spending with a team he has dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency,” has called for the elimination of whole agencies.
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Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers, said the administration “abused” the probation status of workers “to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office.”
Thursday’s order was an expansion of previous directions from the Office of Personnel Management, which told agencies this week that probationary employees should be fired if they weren’t meeting high standards. It’s not clear how many workers are currently in a probationary period. According to government data maintained by the OPM, as of March 2024, 220,000 workers had less than a year on the job — the most recent data available.
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The firing of probationary employees began earlier this week and has included the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education workers.
The layoffs also hit Department of Veterans Affairs researchers working on cancer treatments, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Thursday.
Murray said in a statement that she heard from VA researchers in her state who were told to stop immediately, “not because their work isn’t desperately needed, but because Trump and Elon have decided to fire these researchers on a whim.”
The states’ lawsuit claims that Musk has “roamed through the federal government unraveling agencies, accessing sensitive data, and causing mass chaos and confusion.”
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that defends government workers, said the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service would be hit especially hard by laying off probationary employees because it has trouble recruiting inspectors required to be present at all times at most slaughterhouses.
Department of Health and Human Services officials expected most of the agency’s roughly 5,200 probationary employees to be fired Friday, according to an audio recording of a National Institutes of Health department meeting.
The department employs more than 80,000 people and runs 13 supporting agencies, including the CDC, the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration. The department also provides health coverage for nearly half the country through Medicare and Medicaid.
Its staff includes scientists, researchers and doctors. It oversees research of vaccines, diseases and cures. It regulates the medications found in medicine cabinets and inspects the foods that end up in cupboards.
With a $9.2-billion core budget, the CDC is charged with protecting Americans from outbreaks and other public health threats. Before the cuts, the agency had about 13,000 employees. The CDC is a global leader on disease control, with some of the top experts in the world.
The civilian federal workforce, not including military personnel and postal workers, is made up of about 2.4 million people. About 20% of the workers are in Washington, D.C., and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia, and more than 80% are outside the Capitol region.
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Layoffs are unlikely to yield significant deficit savings. When the Congressional Budget Office looked at the issue, it found the government spent $271 billion annually compensating civilian federal workers, with about 60% of that total going to workers employed by the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.
The government could, in theory, cut all those workers and still run a deficit of more than $1 trillion that would continue to grow as tax revenues are needed to keep up with the growing costs of Social Security and Medicare.
Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said firing employees on probation is flawed because it targets younger workers.
“Baby boomers are retiring right and left, so actually the people you want to keep are probably most of the people who are right now on probation,” said Kamarck, who worked in former President Clinton’s administration when about 426,000 federal jobs were cut over more than eight years in a deliberative effort aimed at reinventing government.
Trump’s initial attempt to downsize the workforce was the deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, which offered to pay people until Sept. 30 if they agreed to quit. The White House said 75,000 people signed up, and a federal judge cleared a legal roadblock for the program Wednesday.
However, the number of workers who took the offer was less than the administration’s target, and Trump has made it clear he would take further steps.
Employees at the National Science Foundation and Housing and Urban Development Department were told this week that large reductions, in some cases a halving of the workforce, would be coming, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The order Trump signed Tuesday stipulated that government functions not required by law would be prioritized for cuts and hiring will be restricted. With exceptions for functions such as public safety, only one employee can be added for every four that leave. In addition, new hires would generally need approval from a representative of Musk’s team, expanding its influence.
Megerian and Price write for the Associated Press. Price reported from New York. AP writers Will Weissert, Lisa Mascaro, Josh Boak and Collin Binkley in Washington, Carla Johnson in Seattle, Mike Stobbe in New York, Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., and JoNel Aleccia in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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