As of Friday afternoon, it was unclear how many employees would be affected.
Photo Illustration: Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Education | Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images | Braun and Prostock-Studio/iStock/Getty Images
Department of Education staff will be affected by massive layoffs across the federal government, a spokesman said on Friday.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought has been threatening layoffs for weeks, citing a government shutdown. Vought wrote on social media on Friday that the force reductions he promised had begun.
A department spokesman later confirmed in an email Inside higher education “ED staff will be affected by RIF.” The spokesperson did not specify how many staff would be affected or which offices were affected. Other sources said staff at the federal student aid office will not be laid off.
An estimated 466 employees have received layoff notices, Trump administration officials said in a court filing. About 1,100 to 1,200 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were also laid off. In total, more than 4,200 employees at eight agencies were laid off.
The Ministry of Education expects more than 2,001 layoffs. The agency that President Trump wants to shut down already lost nearly half of its career staff in the first round of massive layoffs in March. In the wake of the layoffs, former employees warned they would lead to technical mishaps, regulatory gaps and a loss of institutional knowledge. University administrators also reported delays and problems getting communications and updates from the department, but agency officials said critical services are continuing.
Federal unions and multiple outside education advocacy groups challenged the first round of layoffs in court. Lower courts blocked RIF, but the Supreme Court overturned those rulings in July. The affected employees officially left the department in August.
As Vought threatens layoffs, another lawsuit challenges the latest round of lawsuits — even before pink slips are distributed today. The document was filed in late September.
The latest round of layoffs will affect at least staff in the offices of elementary and secondary education and communications and outreach, according to the union that represents Department of Education employees and sources with ties to employees still working at the department as of Friday morning. A union representative added that all employees in the communications office’s state and local engagement division were laid off.
A senior department leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Inside higher education The layoffs, directed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), came as a surprise.
“Last week [education] The senior leader explained, “The secretary’s office said there was no RIF at all. We heard on Tuesday that OMB sent a list of people to ED for RIF…ED apparently redacted it and sent it back.”
In either case, the federal student aid office, which administers Pell Grants and student loans, has no plans to make cuts, the senior leader added.
Rachel Gittleman, president of the union representing Department of Education employees, pledged in a statement to oppose the layoffs.
“This administration continues to take every opportunity to illegally dismantle the Department of Education in violation of congressional intent,” Gittleman said. “They are using the same tactics to lay off employees without considering the impact on students and families in communities across the country… Dismantling the government through mass layoffs, especially at the Department of Education, is not the answer to our problems as a country.”
Throughout late September and the first 10 days of the shutdown, Vought and President Trump used the threat of further RIFs to try to persuade Senate Democrats to acquiesce and sign into law the Republicans’ budget stopgap bill. But Democrats stood firm and refused to sign the bill unless Republicans met their demands and extended the expiring health insurance tax credit.
Andrew G. Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in an email Inside higher education Earlier Friday, layoff notices were sent to “employees across multiple divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services.” But he did not grant an interview or respond to a written question asking whether the cuts included employees at the National Institutes of Health, a major funder of university research.
“HHS under the Biden administration has become a bloated bureaucracy,” Nixon wrote. “All HHS employees who received layoff notices have been designated as non-essential entities by their respective departments. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are inconsistent with the Trump Administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
Democrats and some Republicans have warned of layoffs. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, opposed the layoffs in a statement while also blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
“Arbitrary layoffs result in a lack of adequate personnel to carry out the agency’s mission and deliver essential programs, and are harming families in Maine and across the country,” she said.
But Democrats in particular argue that laying off federal workers during a shutdown is unconstitutional.
“No one is asking Trump and Walt to hurt American workers — they just want to,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Friday afternoon. “The shutdown does not give Trump or Vought new special powers to sow more chaos or permanently weaken more basic services for the American people… This is nothing new, and no one should be intimidated by these scammers.”
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said in a statement that the government has had to rehire employees who were laid off earlier this year.
“In addition to wasting millions of taxpayer dollars firing and rehiring government employees, arbitrary layoffs of government employees mean fewer people to help manage essential programs,” he said. “Additionally, I worry that the lasting impact of mass layoffs will be a huge loss of valuable agency knowledge. Additionally, random and chaotic layoffs will make it difficult to recruit qualified employees in the future.”
