RFK Jr slashes HHS staff from 82,000 to 62,000 workers

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with Robert F Kennedy Jr as the head, has brought the number of staff positions from 82,000 to 62,000 as the Trump administration has been working to shrink the scope of the federal government as well as cut waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending. Of the 20,000 staffers, 10,000 are to be let go from the agency and 10,000 left once the Trump administration came into office, sending out emails that offered severance packages for federal workers who quit. 

“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 in a press release from HHS. "This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer."

The cuts come after there have already been around 10,000 voluntary departures from the agency after Trump began his second term in office. In a video released on X on Thursday, Kennedy said that the goal of slashing the spending at the agency is aimed at streamlining the department to make it more effective and to improve the services provided by HHS to make Americans healthy again.

Kennedy said that when he arrived in Washington, DC, he "found that over half of [HHS'] employees don't even come to work. HHS has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 IT departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine HR departments. In many cases, they don't even talk to each other."

He later added, "Instead of remedying the chronic disease crisis, perverse incentives have administrators checking boxes and creating their own homework while public health declines. A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they're supposed to be regulating."

The reduction of staff will take the agency from 82,000 to 62,000 and the department said that it will save taxpayers $1.8 billion.

"Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants," Secretary Kennedy said of the cuts. 'This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. That’s the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again."

HHS is responsible for approximately 25 percent of the federal government's budget, according to Breitbart, and the whole department costs around $2 trillion.