The Trump administration’s quiet backtracking from the firings and voluntary retirements — which are also paired with new hires to fill vacancies those departures created — come as federal agencies are still implementing their “reduction-in-force” plans as part of a push for spending cuts.
With hurricane season looming, the National Weather Service — which lost more than 560 employees to layoffs and early retirement incentives earlier this year — received permission to hire about 125 new meteorologists and specialists for its forecast offices around the country, despite a federal hiring freeze. Those hires will help staff offices that had to cut back on their hours or stop staffing the overnight shift.
The Department of Health and Human Services reinstated 450 employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were fired as part of a massive reorganization in April, including workers focused on HIV and childhood lead exposure.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in May that the department had also reinstated 328 workers at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health focused on mine safety.
Those employees combined represent about one-third of the 2,400 workers whose jobs HHS eliminated as part of its “reduction-in-force” plan as the Trump administration slashed the size of the federal workforce.
The US Department of Education headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. The Education Department is pushing to terminate half of its more than 4,000 employees, the Trump administration’s first major step in dismantling an agency it has targeted to shutter completely.
More than 200 employees had their firings rescinded at the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and Tuberculosis Prevention, along with 158 at the National Center for Environmental Health, an HHS spokesperson confirmed.
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