Despite rehiring hundreds of FDA, CDC and NIH employees, the Department of Health and Human Services is still a skeleton of its former self under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Last week, a federal court in Rhode Island ruled against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., putting a temporary stop to his sweeping and drastic overhaul of the Department of Health and Human Services.
As members of the U.S. government’s executive branch, Kennedy and the HHS do “not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” Judge Melissa DuBose wrote at the time.
Her ruling delivered a court victory to a group of 19 states, plus the District of Columbia, which in May sued Kennedy—alongside other HHS leaders such as FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and CDC Acting Director Susan Monarez—blasting the restructuring as an “unconstitutional and illegal dismantling” of the agency. Kennedy has “systematically deprived HHS of the resources necessary to do its job,” they alleged.
But just how many staff have left HHS, as well as how many have been rehired due to acknowledged errors in the process, remains somewhat obscured. According to reporting by Inside Health Policy in March, even Congress doesn’t have a firm grasp on how extensive the layoffs have been. Citing conversations with knowledgeable sources, the outlet reported at the time that HHS officials were giving conflicting layoff numbers, with their tallies often not adding up.
At one point, a lawyer representing the Trump administration said that he wasn’t sure if anyone in the government knew the exact figures of fired and rehired federal employees, according to Inside Health Policy.
Here, BioSpace has gathered as much information as possible to understand the current makeup of HHS.
A Skeleton Crew
Since he assumed leadership of HHS in February, Kennedy has eliminated some 10,000 posts across the department. The FDA, crucial to the department’s interactions with the biopharma industry, bore the heaviest burden of these layoffs, with 3,500 positions erased. Meanwhile, some 2,400 jobs at the CDC and 1,200 at the NIH were cut.
Kennedy’s cuts approximately doubled the turnover at HHS. In the weeks leading up to his confirmation, President Donald Trump, alongside his then-advisor Elon Musk, had already put in motion a plan to thin out the department. This push culminated in the termination of over 5,000 probationary employees in February, just a day after Kennedy formally became HHS Secretary. In March, now firmly under Kennedy’s direction, HHS offered as much as $25,000 to employees willing to resign from their posts—an offer that hundreds accepted.
All told, HHS is looking at an employee exodus of up to 20,000 individuals, according to figures from the government itself.
Democratic lawmakers have strongly criticized this dramatic downsizing of the department. In March, days before Kennedy’s 10,000 cuts, seven senate Democrats called on Trump to reverse the layoffs at the CDC, noting the agency’s “critical responsibility and record of keeping Americans safe.”
A few days later, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) broke the record for the longest floor speech delivered, speaking for more than 25 hours in protest of Trump’s “complete disregard for the rule of law, the constitution, and the needs of the American people.” Booker was referring to Trump’s policies broadly, including the healthcare cuts.
Amid such pressure from lawmakers—and other parties, such as professional medical organizations and unions—hundreds have been rehired. As the reinstatements began, Kennedy himself admitted that upwards of 2,000 federal employees were cut by mistake. So far, HHS has brought back staff working in various departments, including those in charge of preventing infectious diseases, those ensuring workplace safety and those involved in drug policy.
But just how many HHS employees have been reinstated remains unknown and it’s clear that the department is operating with a skeleton crew. Thousands of posts across the country’s top health authority have been eliminated, leaving many worried that the agencies may not be able to carry out their duties and responsibilities efficiently.
