Latest news with #workforceReduction
NHK
28-07-2025
- Business
- NHK
More than 20% of NASA employees opt to leave agency: US media
US media outlets say nearly 4,000 employees have applied to leave the NASA space agency under a program by President Donald Trump's administration to cut federal spending. CBS News and other media have reported that 3,870 staff, or over 20 percent of NASA's workforce, have applied to leave. The agency employs about 18,000 people. The reports said the deadline for applications for the deferred resignation program was on Friday. The Trump administration says NASA will face a 24-percent year-on-year reduction in the budget for the fiscal year that begins in October. About 360 current and former employees of the agency published an open letter on Monday last week to voice their opposition to the spending cuts. The "Voyager Declaration" says, "The last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA's workforce."
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
VA expects 30K voluntary job cuts by October, erasing need for layoffs
Voluntary retirements and resignations are expected to trim 30,000 Veterans Affairs workforce positions by the end of September, forgoing plans for potential forced resignations this fiscal year to meet administration goals to reduce the size of government, department leaders announced Monday. Already, about 17,000 VA jobs have been vacated since Jan. 1 through a combination of deferred resignations, retirements, normal attrition and department hiring freezes, officials said. Another 12,000 posts are expected to be cleared out over the next two and a half months. VA Secretary Doug Collins in a statement said that because of those significant workforce reductions — equalling a 6% decrease in the roughly 484,000 VA workforce last fall — department leaders are no longer discussing the idea of a department Reduction In Force process. 'Since March, we've been conducting a holistic review of the department centered on reducing bureaucracy and improving services to veterans,' Collins said in a statement. 'As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction — both in terms of staff levels and customer service.' House passes $435 billion spending plan for VA in fiscal 2026 A VA spokesman said the department is not looking to make any additional 'major changes' to staffing levels beyond that 30,000 cut. Previously, officials had said they may eliminate up to 80,000 department jobs in coming months. For the last several months, department leaders and members of President Donald Trump's White House staff have insisted that workforce cuts are needed to trim down the federal bureaucracy to reduce spending and improve efficiency. However, Democratic lawmakers and union leaders have strongly objected to those claims, saying the increased medical and benefits workload of the department mandates more staffing, not less. They have also said that hiring freezes and staff cuts have begun to hurt veterans benefits, particularly in tasks indirectly related to medical care, such as appointment scheduling and medical supply delivery. But Collins and top VA officials have said the department has multiple safeguards in place to ensure that staff reductions do not impact veteran care or benefits, including exempting more than 350,000 positions from the federal hiring freeze. Department officials also pointed to positive trends in benefits processing and medical care in recent months, continuing trends from the last few years. Collins said in his statement Monday that the staff reductions thus far have 'resulted in a host of new ideas for better serving veterans that we will continue to pursue.' Department leaders said they are looking at 'duplicative and costly administrative functions that can be centralized or restructured' for additional workforce savings, as well as reducing some of the 274 separate call centers the department runs. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Veterans Affairs Department scales back DOGE-led plan for over 76,000 layoffs
WASHINGTON − The Department of Veterans Affairs has massively scaled back a DOGE-backed plan to sack more than 76,000 employees, saying it had "eliminated the need" for the huge workforce cut. A leaked memo from VA leadership obtained by USA TODAY and other outlets in March outlined a plan to shed more than 76,000 workers as part of the Trump administration's widespread efforts to reduce the federal workforce. The VA has now abandoned that goal, it said in a July 7 announcement. More: Despite DOGE, Pentagon escapes Donald Trump's budget cuts unscathed The Department is "on pace to reduce total VA staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025, eliminating the need for a large-scale reduction-in-force," it said. Nearly 17,000 VA employees left their jobs from the beginning of the year through June 1, and the department expects almost 12,000 more to leave by the end of September, according to the announcement. Under former presidential adivsor Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, tens of thousands of federal employees were purged from in widespread sackings and through a deferred resignation program, which offered federal workers a buyout to leave their jobs early. In July, President Donald Trump extended a government-wide hiring freeze until Oct. 15. The freeze, which he imposed by executive order in January, was set to expire on July 15. The VA said it "has multiple safeguards in place to ensure these staff reductions do not impact Veteran care or benefits." It has claimed throughout the DOGE-led cuts that "mission-critical" positions are exempted from the hiring freeze and layoffs. USA TODAY and other outlets reported in February that some responders on the Veterans Crisis Line, a hotline for veterans at risk of mental health crisis or suicide, were temporarily laid off – they were rehired following an uproar from Democratic lawmakers and labor unions. Still, widespread fires and rehires across the department sent morale among workers plunging and sparked fears of serious impacts to veterans hospitals that were already severely understaffed and crucial VA-funded research programs. Veterans Affairs Sec. Doug Collins told Fox News in a July 8 interview that VA leaders conducted a "very thoughtful, very careful study" of the department's structure before implementing layoffs and that 350,000 positions were "protected." "We've still got a little bit to go. We've got some other things that we want to do in the future. This is a great start," he added. Peter Kasperowicz, a department spokesperson, said "VA is not planning to make any other major changes to staffing levels beyond those outlined" in the July 7 announcement. Sen. Jerry Moran, the Republican chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a July 7 statement that he had spoken with Collins and "appreciate his efforts to make certain veterans are at the center of any changes at the VA." Democratic lawmakers stressed the workforce reduction would still amount to the loss of tens of thousands of VA workers which would have a devastating impact on veterans' healthcare. More: DOGE staffer nicknamed 'Big Balls' leaves White House cost-cutting staff 'This announcement makes clear VA is bleeding employees across the board at an unsustainable rate because of the toxic work environment created by this Administration and DOGE's slash and trash policies," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, the committee's top Democrat, said in a statement. "It is shameful, and it will continue to ruin veterans' trust in VA for years to come," he added. But some labor unions representing federal workers celebrated the announcement. 'Because AFGE members across the country raised our voices, built coalitions, and took action, that plan was stopped in its tracks," Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said in a statement. "This is a major victory for federal workers, for veterans, and for the American people." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: VA abandons DOGE-led goal for more than 76,000 layoffs
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bumble shares soar after dating app announces major job cuts
Bumble is cutting a third of its workforce, the latest sign that all is not well in the business of online dating. Williams leads the charge in bridging today's energy needs with tomorrow's technologies I've become an AI vibe coding convert Senate Republicans are about to pass a bill that will destroy the climate and spike your energy bills The company informed its staff of the layoffs in a letter from founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd on Wednesday, describing the company and the dating industry as reaching an 'inflection point.' 'In recent months, we've been rebuilding—returning to what makes us trusted, unique, and deeply human,' Wolfe Herd wrote. 'But intentional rebuilding requires hard decisions.' Bumble's workforce reduction will affect 240 positions, reducing the company's head count by 30%. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Bumble said that it expects the layoffs to save $40 million annually—cash that it plans to reinvest into product and technology development. The company expects to pay between $13 and $18 million in costs related to the layoffs in the third and fourth quarters of the year. On Wednesday, Bumble's shares rose more than 20% on news of the layoffs and were trading around $6.26 at the time of writing. 'The reality is, we need to take decisive action to restructure to build a company that's resilient, intentional, and ready for the next decade,' Wolfe Herd wrote. 'We have reset our strategy and are going back to a startup mentality—rooted in an ownership mindset and team structures designed for faster, more meaningful execution.' Wolfe Herd left her role as Bumble's CEO at the beginning of 2024, with former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones stepping in to lead the company. In March of this year, Jones resigned for personal reasons, and Wolfe Herd again took the helm of the company she founded in 2014 after cofounding Tinder—now Bumble's main rival. Bumble, which has historically put women in the driver's seat of the online dating experience, has struggled to find its footing in a post-pandemic online dating world where many former users feel burned out by the churn of dating apps. The company isn't alone in that struggle—dating giant Match Group announced its own major layoffs last month—but Bumble has resorted to altering its own DNA to adapt to a changing landscape for users looking for love. Last year, Bumble announced that men on its app would be allowed to message women first, a huge change for a dating system that's prided itself on letting women make the initial move. The feature, called Opening Moves, let women set prompts on their profiles that men could choose to respond to. The gamble doesn't appear to have made a lasting impact on Bumble's bottom line, and the company's stock continued to slide into 2025. Bumble first went public in 2021 with its buzzy stock debuting at more than $70 a share—a distant memory from the stock's recent single digit values. Bumble's woes are shared by Match Group, its biggest rival, which owns Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, and a deep roster of other niche and general interest dating apps. The two competitors, which together account for nearly all of the online dating market share, lost more than $40 billion combined between 2021 and 2024. Online dating is a strange business in some ways. While hookup apps like Grindr might beg to differ, a successful dating app interaction could result in both users leaving the app for a long stretch, or even forever. That intrinsic paradox is a tricky business to begin with, but the more dire existential threat might be that neither Match Group nor Bumble can seem to crack the code of Gen Z's dating habits. So far, that emerging cohort of eligible singles isn't very interested in paying for a subscription on a dating app and, worse yet, might be looking for love IRL, of all places. This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bumble to Cut 30% of Workforce, Lifts Quarterly Outlook; Shares Jump
Bumble (BMBL) said that it is reducing about 30% of its global workforce, while the dating apps oper
