US Education Department to lay off half its staff, CNN reports

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The U.S. Department of Education plans to lay off half its staff, CNN reports.
• Other agencies, including the Social Security Administration, are offering early retirement incentives.
• The Trump administration's mass layoffs aim to overhaul government efficiency, led by Elon Musk.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education is expected to lay off half its staff, CNN reported, as multiple government agencies scrambled to meet President Donald Trump's Thursday deadline for them to submit plans for a second round of mass layoffs.

Several agencies have turned to early retirement programs to fulfill Trump's mandate, offering lump-sum payments of up to $25,000 before tax to workers who agree to leave their jobs. Among these are the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, including its Food and Drug Administration.

The buyout offers, combined with another program that eases eligibility requirements for early retirement, are being embraced as a lower-friction way to help meet the Thursday deadline, human resource specialists at several federal agencies told Reuters.

The Education Department, which Trump has repeatedly vowed to eliminate entirely, will begin laying off about half of its approximately 4,000 workers on Tuesday evening, CNN and other outlets reported.

Reuters had previously reported the administration had ordered the department's offices closed for unspecified "security reasons" from Tuesday evening through Wednesday. Similar closures served as a precursor to shuttering the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Trump administration has been grappling with myriad lawsuits after it fired thousands of probationary workers in a first wave of mass layoffs and dismantled entire departments like United States Agency for International Development, the U.S. humanitarian aid agency, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans against unscrupulous lenders.

All U.S. government agencies have been ordered to come up with large-scale layoff plans by Thursday as part of Trump's unprecedented campaign to overhaul the government. One of his top advisers, the world's richest person Elon Musk, is leading that effort with his Department of Government Efficiency.

The General Services Administration, which manages the government's property portfolio, is also seeking approval to offer the buyout payments to workers, according to an email sent by its acting head to staff on Monday and seen by Reuters. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already offered bonuses of up to $50,000, Reuters reported.

Human resource and public governance experts said the appeal of the buyout program is that it is voluntary and less vulnerable to legal challenges. It also requires workers who have accepted the offer to repay the money if they take another government job within five years.

"If your strategy is to get as many people out the door voluntarily, that reduces the risk of court orders and opposition to you in the long run," said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan.

Office of Personnel Management waits for plans

Only a couple of agencies have telegraphed via media leaks how many employees they plan to cut in the second phase of layoffs. These include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is aiming to cut more than 80,000 workers, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is planning to cut 1,029 staff.

Despite the looming deadline, no agency has yet submitted its job-cutting plan to the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources department that is collating the data, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The agency declined to comment.

The agency itself has offered lump-sum payments to some 650 of its employees, according to another person with knowledge of the matter. Employees were given until March 12 to respond.

At the General Services Administration, employees were informed on Monday that the Office of Personnel Management had a plan to offer an early retirement program to all eligible employees.

"I encourage each of you to consider your options as we move forward," General Services Administration Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian wrote in an email seen by Reuters. "The new GSA will be slimmer, more efficient and laser-focused on efficiency and high-value outcomes."

On March 10, the human resources department of the Food and Drug Administration sent an email to all its 19,000 employees announcing a Friday, March 14, deadline to opt into a VSIP. Those who accept would have to retire by April 19.

"There will be no extensions," states the email, reviewed by Reuters and signed by Tania Tse, director of the FDA's Office of Human Capital Management.

Late on Monday, Human and Health Services sweetened its prior Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments offer by adding that workers accepting it would get two months of full pay in addition to the bonus, according to a copy of the email seen by Reuters.

Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union that represents 110,000 government workers, said the Trump administration was using "a legitimate program to further damage the capabilities of agencies to complete their mission."

The Office of Personnel Management declined to respond to Lenkart's comments.

Contributing: Alexandra Alper, Marisa Taylor and Nathan Layne

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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