U.S. health department plans to slash 10,000 jobs as RFK Jr. upends agencies

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to slash 10,000 full-time employees across different departments, as he works to reshape the nation’s federal health agencies, the department said Thursday.

Those job cuts are in addition to about 10,000 employees who opted to leave HHS since President Donald Trump took office, through voluntary separation offers. Combined, they will lead to the federal health department shedding about a quarter of its workforce, shrinking it to 62,000 employees.

HHS is a $1.7 trillion agency that oversees vaccines and other medicines, scientific research, public health infrastructure, pandemic preparedness and food and tobacco products. The department also manages government-funded health care for millions of Americans – including seniors, disabled people and lower-income patients who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act’s markets.

The department will cut jobs at divisions responsible for offering insurance to the poorest Americans, approving new drugs, and responding to disease outbreaks, according to The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported the cuts.

The major restructuring comes as the U.S. grapples with one of the worst measles outbreaks in more than two decades, and as bird flu spreads in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with several recent human cases.

HHS will also drop five of its 10 regional offices, but it said essential health services won’t be affected.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

The department said the cuts will save the government about $1.8 billion per year. The federal government spent roughly $6.8 trillion in fiscal 2024.

Here are the employees the Trump administration plans to cut, according to the Journal:

• 3,500 full-time employees from the Food and Drug Administration, or about 19% of its workforce
• 2,400 workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or roughly 18% of its staff
• 1,200 employees from the National Institutes of Health, or about 6% of its workforce
• 300 workers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or roughly 4% of its employees

As part of the restructuring, Kennedy is consolidating the department’s 28 current divisions into 15 new ones, which HHS said will “centralize core functions” such as human resources, information technology, procurement, external affairs and policy.

Among them is a new subdivision called the Administration for a Healthy America, which will combine offices in HHS that address addiction, toxic substances, mental health and occupational safety, among others, into one central office. That includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

HHS said combining those agencies will “improve coordination of health resources for low-income Americans” and will focus on areas including primary care, maternal and child health, mental health, environmental health, HIV/AIDS and workforce development.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is responsible for national disaster response and pandemic preparedness planning, will move under the CDC. Currently, ASPR is its own operating division in HHS. 

An HHS employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said workers have not yet been notified about whether they are impacted by the cuts. That uncertainty is scaring employees and raising questions that leadership can’t seem to answer yet, the person said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said in a statement Thursday that “American families are going to be hurt by layoffs and closures of this magnitude, full stop.”

“The chaos that is coming will guarantee that kids and seniors fall through the cracks with deadly consequences,” he said.

Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, said there is “a benefit to occasional reorganizations of HHS to achieve better coordination and efficiency,” which has happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

But he told CNBC that the plans are “not just a reorganization of HHS” as they involve cutting the federal workforce, which will ultimately affect government services.

“People and health care providers may find themselves waiting longer to get help and get their questions answered, and that will cause frustration and delays in services,” Levitt said. “A lot of what HHS employees do is behind the scenes oversight, working to prevent fraud and abuse and ensure health care programs provide the services they promise. With fewer people watching the store at HHS, problems will start to pop up.”

Cutting staff, consolidating divisions and centralizing certain functions are unlikely to produce as “many efficiency gains” as the Trump administration expects, said Genevieve Kanter, associate professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. That’s because HHS is a diverse department that oversees agencies with specific needs, she added.

For example, CMS’ information technology needs are likely “much more stringent” than those of other health agencies because it oversees Medicare and Medicaid and manages the protected health information of millions of Americans, Kanter said.

She said Kennedy’s new subdivision seems to be “particularly inconsistent with the goal of streamlining” because the agencies being combined are so different but align with his areas of interest in tackling chronic disease.

“It’s not obvious that there’s an operational reason for combining them because obviously regulating food additives is very different from regulating chloride in the water supply, addressing mental health needs, encouraging exercise among children, which are all sort of underneath that chronic diseases rubric,” Kanter said.

She noted that overall, inefficiencies in U.S. healthcare appear to be more related to flaws in how the system is structured and organized, not government administration like Thursday’s announcement suggests.

Before he was confirmed, Kennedy pledged to end what he calls “corporate corruption” at federal health agencies and purge staff when he stepped into his role in the Trump administration.

He had said he would clear out “entire departments” at the FDA, saying that workers who stand in the way of approval of several controversial or dubious treatments should prepare to “pack their bags.”

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has made early moves that could impact immunization policy and further dampen uptake in the U.S. at a time when childhood vaccination rates are falling.

He has said he will review the childhood vaccination schedule and is reportedly preparing to remove and replace members of external committees that advise the government on vaccine approvals and other key public health decisions, among other efforts.

His so-called Make America Healthy Again platform also pledges to end the chronic disease epidemic in children and adults. Kennedy has been vocal about making nutritious food, rather than drugs, central to that goal.