A massive federal staff elimination
HUNDREDS of thousands of U.S. Federal Government employees and of leading companies are being laid off. Also being frozen is further hiring of additional workforce as per President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders issued immediately after his inauguration on January 20, 2025.
The massive federal staff elimination exercise was initiated after the creation of a new Federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with the single objective of stemming the ever-proliferating bureaucracy. Before he returned to the White House for his current second four-year presidential term last year, President Donald Trump had ordered setting up the DOGE headed by Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. But Vivek stepped aside later saying he intended to contest next year’s midterm elections for Ohio’s governorship and therefore may not be available.
Meanwhile, under the DOGE programme, staff terminations have so far occurred or are being planned to effect in the federal departments, such as the Pentagon, the nation’s mighty defence establishment. The Pentagon has already terminated 5,400 jobs, followed by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service firing 6,700 jobs; Department of Education 4,400 jobs; Department of Health and Human Services 10,000 jobs. The DHHS, which is currently under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is actively engaged in re-organizing and re-designing staff deployments with a view to drastically reducing the layoffs of the department’s 82,000-personnel strength to a 62,000 full-time workforce.
In addition, over 5,200 probationary workers, who have been in their positions for less than a year or two were dismissed in February. Thus, with the removal of these workers, the department will shrink from its present size of 28 divisions to 15. The HHS will also reduce its regional offices from ten to five. This exercise of workforce reduction will save $1.5 billion per year, according to the department’s latest announcement.
According to a press statement, ‘HHS’s new priority will be to end ‘America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.’ Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has said that the department ‘will do more, a lot more, at a lower cost.’ But Kennedy said that it’ll mean ‘fewer health services for the community.’ However, a new sub-division. Administration for a healthy America combining offices in HHS will focus on chronic disease-prevention prorgrammes and health resources for low-income Americans.
Another federal department, Small Businesses Administration, has announced it will ‘eliminate non-essential roles. The department hopes to cut nearly 2,700 positions. Its current strength is 6,500 employees, about 43% reduction, according to the Federal news network. The department will ‘re-focus its resources on the core mission of supplying capital, fostering innovation, supporting veteran small business owners, providing field support, and delivering timely disaster relief.’
Meanwhile, the small private businesses have their own individual job-cut programmes, as per their unit’s requirements. In small companies and undertakings, job eliminations occur all the while. According to a Harvard University small business expert, Dr. Joseph Fuller, an emergency is usually an emergency turn-around kind of stuff companies which seems the way the administration views a lot of this. He adds that companies have ‘long turned to mass layoffs as a way to reduce costs… it’s not a strategy with greatest accuracy and equity.’ Nearly 190+ leading U.S. companies have announced layoffs and hiring freezes:
Tech companies, among these, Amazon’s various section-wise include: 5% job cuts in Podcast Audible division; 35% in Twitch unit; a few hundred in medical pharmacy and some of the company’s global services.
Layoffs at Alphabet: include dozens on its other divisions for developing new technologies X Lab, in divisions for sales, advertising, hardware for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit and majority in augmented reality teams. Microsoft is cutting around 1,900 jobs in the gaming division and other allied sections. Other Techs are IBM, E-Commerce, and E-Bay; DocuSign, Videogames, Snap, and Sales, etc., each to eliminate hundreds of jobs.
Besides, other leading business companies include: Media, Financial Services, Consumer and Retail Services, Health, Logistics, Manufacturing, Natural Services, etc., etc.
In the U.S., private entrepreneurs’ essential reality is that ‘most newer hires are always on the chopping block.’ In many cases employees are given no notice, no due process, and no opportunity to defend themselves in blatant violation of the principles of fairness and merit that are supposed to govern regular employment. As The Washington Post reported recently that there have been cases in private and public undertakings where thousands of workers are laid off in messages delivered through prerecorded videos and on group calls. Some employees were ordered to leave the building within 30 minutes; others where they would be formally fired by email, that never arrived. Job terminations have occurred in numerous federal and private agencies – ranging from small businesses to conducting education research.
Incidentally, as layoffs in several Government agencies effected by the President’s Executive orders have been blocked various courts. Reversing the Trump Administration’s executive orders to shut down Federally- funded news services, notably Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Radio Liberty, created to counter the former Soviet Union’s propaganda, will not be closed, and their staff will stay in their respective positions. A federal judge in Washington has ‘temporarily blocked President Trump’s push to close it down, saying Trump can’t unilaterally dismantle the news organizations established by Congress–both houses of US parliament,’ and also, the administration reinstated 33 employees.
Meanwhile, as staff firings, layoffs, eliminations, dismissals, job-cuts, are still in process, an overall nation-wide federal job-cut picture will emerge in due course of time, and in fact may continue for some time to come. Moreover, as in some cases employee-shrinkages have been stayed by courts; the President has also averred he’s committed to reducing the size and scope of the feral government.’ So, let’s sit with fingers crossed and wait for what’s in store for the American people at large.
Prof. M. R. Dua, former professor-head, journalism department, Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi, and an ex-faculty Journalism, California State University, US
