Government's H.R. Arm Shedding a Third of Staff

New York Times

7 days ago

The Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources arm, has shed 10 percent of its staff and plans to shrink even more by the end of the year, the agency said on Monday.
On Jan. 20, when President Trump returned to the White House, the agency had a staff of 3,110. Hundreds are leaving through incentive programs, and some are leaving without incentives. More than 125 have been laid off.
The newly confirmed director, Scott Kupor, told reporters on Monday that he expected staffing to drop to 2,000, by the end of the year.
Mr. Kupor said the agency was cutting its contractors by half as well, going from about 1,200 at the beginning of the year to 600 by the end of December.
The personnel office has been issuing guidance to agencies for months about how to cut staff and consolidate or eliminate programs. Agencies offered incentives for people to resign voluntarily, which has shifted the calculation of how many employees the government would have to lay off to achieve President Trump's goal of shrinking the size of the federal work force.
Some 788 employees at the personnel office took advantage of the incentives to retire early or resign and get paid through Sept. 30, while 152 others resigned without participating in any of the incentive programs. The agency laid off an additional 129 employees.
The personnel office did not say what other agencies have planned, but the threat of layoffs has been looming since the earliest days of the administration. The Department of Health and Human Services laid off 10,000 employees this spring. And on July 11, the State Department laid off more than 1,000 employees after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court's block on mass government firings.
Most agencies have not announced layoff plans, and the projected number of reductions has changed with thousands of employees leaving the government voluntarily. The Department of Veterans Affairs recently said it would not have to make layoffs because so many people decided to leave.