The Pentagon announced plans Friday to fire 5-8% of its civilian workforce, starting next week with layoffs of 5,400 probationary workers, a Department of Defense official said in a statement.
The initial civilian layoffs will be followed by a Department of Defense hiring freeze to analyze the military’s personnel needs in compliance with Donald Trump’s political goals, Darin Selnick, the acting under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in the statement.
“We anticipate reducing the department’s civilian workforce by 5-8% to produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Selnick said.
“It is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission-critical. Taxpayers deserve to have us take a thorough look at our workforce top-to-bottom to see where we can eliminate redundancies.”
The announcement of sweeping firings of civilian workers was followed by Donald Trump’s firing of the current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General CQ Brown Jr.
The initial Pentagon job cuts planned for next week are a fraction of the 50,000 defense department job losses that some had anticipated, but they might not be the last. The defense department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.
A 5-8% cut in that force would mean layoffs of between 35,000 and 60,000 people.
The announcement of the cuts comes after staffers from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, or Doge, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, US officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt.
Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has supported cuts, posting on X last week that the Pentagon needs “to cut the fat (HQ) and grow the muscle (warfighters).”
Hegseth also has directed the military services to identify $50bn in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities. It represents about 8% of the military’s budget.
Most of recently terminated employees throughout the federal government began their current position in the last year and were therefore considered probationary, giving them less job protection. Roughly half of them live in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, government figures show.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting
