The FDA has so far secured 600 new hires and is looking for 1,600 more as interim leadership at the agency aims to rebuild the workforce and morale after more than a year of intense attrition.
After losing more than 3,000 staffers last year, the FDA is looking to hire some 2,200, according to Acting Chief of Staff and Deputy Commissioner Lowell Zeta—including some of the recently departed employees.
“We’re at about 600 that are in onboarding clearance at sort of the various levels, with a couple hundred already through the process,” Zeta told attendees of an FDA Town Hall at the BIO International Convention on Tuesday. “This is across the agency, so we feel like we’re making good progress.”
While hiring had been slow going for a time, it’s picked up in the last month or so, following the latest leadership shakeup that saw the exits of Commissioner Marty Makary and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Director Vinay Prasad, among others. Acting Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Director Michael Davis has seen this uptick in the numbers at the FDA’s bimonthly new employee orientations, which for the last three pay periods have been very well attended—on the order of several dozen new staffers each, he said.
“I can’t remember the exact numbers, but [it’s] within the historical norms for bringing on new people, and I see that as a positive sign that hiring is moving forward,” Davis said.
That’s a noticeable change that Davis has seen since he first started back at the FDA in June 2025, shortly after the “DOGE wrecking ball,” as BIO President and CEO John Crowley called it, blasted through the agency and the rest of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “[Making] new hires has legitimately been an issue from when I started . . . but I do feel like things are moving in the right direction.”
At the same time, FDA leadership is focused on retaining the staffers they have. In addition to the DOGE cuts, HHS incentivized voluntary departures such as early retirements. Over a year of leadership turnover and political interference in agency decisions drove morale into the gutter, driving more employees to find the exit. Now, the acting leaders are working to ensure their teams are heard, well supported and empowered.
“Yes, we’re hiring, but if we’re losing at the same pace of hiring for whatever reason, because people are dissatisfied with what they do, then it’s not working,” Acting CBER Director Karim Mikhail said at the Town Hall.
If anyone is thinking of leaving, he continued, they will sit down with a leader within the agency, “not to say this is an exit interview, but can you come for coffee to discuss how can we keep you.”
And the strategy appears to be working, according to Davis, who said attrition rates at CDER are now down to the historical rate.
Zeta, Davis and Mikhail all cited staffing up and minimizing attrition as their top priority at the moment, something Crowley said he had already sensed through other conversations he’s had. “Certainly from what we’ve seen projected publicly the last 4, 5, 6 weeks, is that intense focus on the workforce, the culture, the morale, the staffing at FDA—getting the house in order, if you will,” he summarized during the Town Hall. “I think that’s the reason the Acting Commissioner [Kyle] Diamantas is not here, because he’s made a commitment to be in White Oak, be the leader on site.”
Mikhail also noted that while the agency continues to operate in its understaffed capacity, FDA leadership is getting “incredibly creative” with the workforce it does have. “Not every division has the same workload . . . and there are expertise that we can take from one team and borrow to another team, at least for a period of time, until we have the right person hired,” he said. “So we’re being also incredibly nimble.”
The leaders’ efforts appear to be paying off as hiring accelerates. They’ve also seen a noticeable improvement in employee satisfaction, Davis said.
“I really make an effort to listen to as many staff as I can, have lunches with them and so forth, and I feel a lot of hope in people of things going forward,” he said. “I think the attrition numbers would support that with data, but qualitatively I do feel like there’s been improvement in morale.”
