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

Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to beat 10,000 full -time employees in different departments because he works to reform the federal health authorities of the nation, the department said on Thursday.

That job losses come on top of around 10,000 employees who chose to leave HHS since President Donald Trump took office, through voluntary divorce offers. Combined, they will lead to the federal health department losing around a quarter of its workforce and reducing it to 62,000 employees.

HHS is an agency of $ 1.7 trillion that supervises vaccines and other medicines, scientific research, infrastructure for public health, pandemic readiness and food and tobacco products. The Department also manages healthcare funded by the government for millions of Americans, including seniors, disabled people and patients with a lower income who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and the markets of the Affordable Care Act.

The Department will cut jobs with divisions responsible for offering insurance to the poorest Americans, approving new medicines and responding to outbreaks of diseases, according to the Wall Street Journal, who previously reported the cutbacks.

The most important restructuring comes when the US struggles with one of the worst outbreaks of measles in more than two decades, and as bird flu spreads around the world in wild birds and outbreaks caused in poultry and American dairy cows, with various recent human cases.

HHS will also drop five of its 10 regional offices, but it said that essential health services will not be influenced.

“We not only reduce the bureaucratic proliferation. We reinvent the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease pidemy,” Kennedy said. “This department will do more – much more – at lower costs for the taxpayer.”

The department said that the cutbacks will save the government around $ 1.8 billion a year. The federal government spent around $ 6.8 trillion in tax 2024.

Here are the employees who intend to cut the Trump administration, according to the journal:

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

As part of the restructuring, Kennedy consolidates the 28 current divisions of the department in 15 new ones, of which HHS said that it will “centralize” core functions such as human resources, information technology, purchasing, external affairs and policy.

Among them is a new subdivision called the administration for a healthy America, which combines offices in HHS that relate to addiction, toxic substances, mental health and professional safety of the profession, including in one central office. This includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

HHS said that combining those agencies “will improve the coordination of health sources for Americans with a low income and will focus on areas such as primary care, health of mothers and children, mental health, environmental health, HIV/AIDS and development of staff.

The administration for strategic readiness and response, which is responsible for the national disaster response and planning of pandemic readiness, will move under the CDC. ASPR is currently its own operational division in HHS.

Before he was confirmed, Kennedy promised to put an end to what he calls “business corruption” at federal health authorities and treatment staff when he stepped into the Trump government.

He had said that he would clean up “entire departments” on the FDA and said that employees who stand in the way of the approval of various controversial or dubious treatments have to prepare for “pack their bags.”

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has made early movements that can influence the immunization policy and the further damping of admission to the US at a time that vaccination rates for children are falling.

He said that he will revise the vaccination schedule for children and reportedly prepares for the removal and replacement of members of external committees that advise the government on vaccing inspections and other important decisions about public health, among other things.

His so-called Make Make Make America Roter Roter platform also promises to put an end to the chronic disease pidemy in children and adults. Kennedy has been pronounced about making nutritious food, instead of drugs, centrally in that goal.