On March 27, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a restructuring to comply with the Department of Government Efficiency's “Workforce Optimization Initiative”: a reduction of about 10,000 full-time employees which, combined with early retirements and the “Fork in the Road” buyout, would shrink the department “from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.” Its fact sheet planned cuts of about 3,500 at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC (1,400 net of roughly 1,000 staff moving in from another office) and 1,200 at NIH. The layoffs were carried out on Tuesday, April 1.
Days later, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he planned to rehire 20 percent of those let go and that this was “always the plan.” Politico reported that HHS had no intention of reinstating any significant number of them. By August 2025, ProPublica counted more than 20,500 workers, about 18 percent of the department, gone, including 21 percent of FDA staff, 15 percent of the CDC's and 16 percent of NIH's; it reported that the CDC Office on Smoking and Health's tracking of youth tobacco use was expected to be discontinued. See also Trump Administration Cuts About 20,000 HHS Positions, 25% of Staff, Including 3,500 at FDA and 2,400 at CDC.
Correction (October 2, 2026): this entry was rewritten. Its title said half of the FDA, CDC and NIH workforce was gone, which no source supports; the documented share is 15 to 21 percent. It gave per-agency layoff figures (2,473 at CDC, 2,519 at FDA, 1,312 at NIH) that appear in none of its sources, and several program-level claims that its sources did not support. Its citation of a Senate report now leads nowhere and was removed.