- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced up to 20% of workers laid off from the department this week will need to be reinstated. The department laid off approximately 10,000 employees.
- Kennedy admitted that the agency knew mistakes would be made during the mass layoffs and that some people would need to be rehired.
- The layoffs included those who work on tobacco addiction programs and food borne illness tracking.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced up to 20% of the recent layoffs at his department may have been an error and that those employees will need to be reinstated.
The department fired approximately 10,000 workers during the week of March 31, meaning up to 2,000 people will need to be rehired.
Key public health staff among those cut
Kennedy said some of the mistaken layoffs included members of the CDC’s lead poisoning and surveillance unit and the FDA’s tobacco addiction team.
“Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut. We’re reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we’ll make mistakes,” Kennedy told reporters.
Recalibrating toward prevention
When he announced the cuts, Kennedy said HHS needed to be recalibrated to focus on disease prevention, not just sick care.
According to Kennedy’s statement to reporters, the Department of Government Efficiency wanted to focus on cuts to administrative roles like human resources or communications positions. He said there were “tremendous redundancies” throughout the department, including over 100 communications departments, 40 procurement departments and dozens of HR and IT departments.
“Most of the cuts are to those administrative sections which are now consolidating or eliminating redundancies. We’re streamlining the agencies. We’re going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said personnel and studies that should not have been cut were cut.
Additional safety roles also affected
Other safety-related positions that were eliminated include those who work to prevent the spread of food-borne illnesses. The FDA will cut back on routine food safety inspections and instead focus on high-risk facilities.
