Nearly all of the roughly 80,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were offered a $25,000 payment to resign on Friday, according to multiple reports.
They have until 5 p.m. on March 14 to accept the “voluntary separation incentive payment,” CBS News said Saturday, citing a source familiar with the situation.
The offer is the latest escalation of mass cuts to the federal workforce being pursued by the Trump administration and led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a federal spending task force helmed by de facto leader Elon Musk.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that subagencies of the HHS were included in the offer, meaning buyouts are on the table for employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration.
In other words, the ranks of government workers responsible for administering key benefit programs, inspecting food, and researching diseases could soon be depleted.
The CDC, meanwhile, is currently responding to a measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico that has killed two people and resulted in at least 230 cases.
The CMS, meanwhile, administers programs that Republicans in Congress are currently considering cutting despite President Donald Trump’s promises that he “won’t touch” entitlement programs.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a longtime vaccine skeptic who has made dubious claims about the dietary impacts of seed oils—hinted last month that he envisioned cuts at the department after he was confirmed by the Senate.
“I have a list in my head,” he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham about who should go at HHS.
Shortly after Trump was elected in November, Kennedy floated the idea of firing and replacing 600 people at the NIH.
Federal agencies announced over 62,200 job cuts at 17 different agencies last month, pushing layoffs in the job market up 245 percent to the highest since July 2020, according to a report by outplacement firm one-time.
The Trump administration has tried one-time payouts in exchange for resignations before: In late February, employees at the Social Security Administration were offered buyout packages worth $15,000 to $25,000.
