Pentagon to lay off about 5,400 probationary employees
The Department of Defense expects to lay off more than 5,000 probationary employees starting next week, as the department complies with the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
The Pentagon expects to reduce the civilian workforce by 5%-8%, according to a Friday afternoon statement from Darin Selnick, who is currently performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
“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,” he said. “We expect approximately 5,400 probationary workers will be released beginning next week as part of this initial effort, after which we will implement a hiring freeze while we conduct a further analysis of our personnel needs, complying as always with all applicable laws.”
The announcement does not specify who is at risk of losing their jobs and whether anyone could be exempted if their roles are mission critical.
It comes days after the department announced it would be seeking to identify around $50 billion worth of “low-impact and low-priority Biden-legacy programs” that they could defund in order to reallocate that money into programs that more closely align with President Donald Trump’s agenda, Robert Salesses, who is performing the duties of deputy secretary of defense, announced on Wednesday night.
Trump and Hegseth have said their priorities for the military are to secure the southern border, build a comprehensive homeland aerial defense system, which they have called the “Iron Dome for America,” and to end the department’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“They care just like we do, to find the redundancies and identify the last vestiges of Biden priorities — the DEI, the woke, the climate change B.S., that’s not core to our mission, and we’re going to get rid of it all,” Hegseth said. “With DOGE, we’re focusing as much as we can on headquarters and fat and redundancies and top line stuff that allows us to reinvest elsewhere.”
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The current Pentagon budget is roughly $850 billion.
There are 17 areas that are exempt from the review, and those include border enforcement, the Virginia-class submarine, homeland missile defense, and the Air Force’s new Collaborative Combat Aircraft, among others, according to Bloomberg News.