“This will be a painful period”: RFK Jr. slashes 24% of US health dept.
Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is slashing a total of 20,000 jobs across the Department of Health and Human Services-or about 24 percent of the workforce-in a sweeping overhaul said to improve efficiency and save money, Kennedy and the HHS announced Thursday.
Combining workforce losses from early retirement, the "Fork in the Road" deferred resignation deal, and 10,000 positions axed in the reductions and restructuring announced today, HHS will shrink from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000 under Kennedy and the Trump administration. The HHS's 28 divisions will be cut down to 15, while five of the department's 10 regional offices will close.
"This will be a painful period," Kennedy said in a video announcement posted on social media. Calling the HHS a "sprawling bureaucracy," Kennedy claimed that the cuts would be aimed at "excess administrators."