Lizzy Lawrence, Sarah Todd, and Matthew Herper, STAT News, March 27, 2025
WASHINGTON — Around 3,500 employees are on the chopping block at the Food and Drug Administration, but they don’t yet know who they are.
The Health and Human Services Department on Thursday announced a sweeping plan to cut 10,000 jobs and consolidate operations across its sub-agencies. FDA drug, medical device, or food reviewers and inspectors will not be among those fired, according to an HHS fact sheet. Instead, the cuts will target employees working on policy, human resources, information technology, procurement, and communications. The administration will start sending notices to employees on Friday, with the terminations coming into effect on May 27.
The sparing of FDA reviewers may put some industry leaders at ease, but other FDA experts are concerned that firing the thousands of employees supporting their work will make it more difficult for the agency to promote innovation and protect public health. The layoffs will shrink the FDA by almost 20%.
“Even though the intent is not to affect product reviews or or inspections, inevitably, by cutting back on services, there will be an impact,” said Wayne Pines, former associate commissioner for public affairs for the FDA.
The cuts align with Elon Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service’s mission to trim the workforce. But they also represent HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal to exert more control over the sub-agencies he oversees. Even high-level FDA officials appear not to have been briefed on the cuts, sources told STAT, indicating a tightening of command within HHS. The power shift is clear on the media side, as STAT’s media requests continue to be redirected from FDA to the HHS press tea
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This is not the administration’s first attempt to shrink HHS. In February, Musk laid off thousands of probationary workers, including people working on food safety, AI regulation, and preventing the spread of infectious diseases. After pushback from the device industry, the administration rehired some FDA reviewers a week later. A federal judge has since paused all the probationary layoffs. The administration has also offered civil servants $25,000 to leave their posts, and instated a strict work-in-office work policy that has alienated some employees.
Several employees at FDA have told STAT that morale is extremely low, particularly given the agency’s leadership vacuum. The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Marty Makary as FDA commissioner, but he hasn’t yet been sworn into the role. Lawmakers pressed Makary at his confirmation hearing about the DOGE cuts at the FDA, urging him to personally assess personnel before any major culling of the agency.
“If confirmed as commissioner, you have my commitment that I will do an assessment of the staffing and personnel at the agency,” Makary said. It is unclear if he will get the chance.
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Pines noted that efforts to consolidate HHS and FDA are not new; as the former head of communications, he’s witnessed several reorganizations. But he said the level of consolidation is unprecedented, and could significantly impact the way FDA operates.
“The concept of consolidation, every secretary has had their point of view about that,” Pines said. “But there’s never been a change like this at FDA anywhere near this scale.”
The cuts seem “too big, too fast. I agree with RFK Jr., who says this is going to be painful, and I’m not sure what the rewards are going to be,” said Diana Zuckerman, a former congressional investigator for FDA approval standards and president of the nonprofit think tank National Center for Health Research. “These kinds of changes usually are extremely disruptive and not productive for at least a few years.”
Zuckerman wondered whether the cuts will ultimately impede Kennedy’s ambitions to reshape U.S. regulation of food. Kennedy has said he wants to focus on food labeling and fixing the “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, loophole in FDA review of food ingredients, as well as improving the quality and supply of infant formula.
“I think those are important,” Zuckerman said. “Who’s going to do that?” Even if the people working on those specific issues are not affected by the cuts, “usually you’d need more people working on those kinds of issues.”
Around 46% of the FDA’s total budget comes from “user fees” paid by industry to speed up product reviews. The FDA can use this money to fund employees who review medical product applications, conduct research to speed up regulatory decisions, inspect facilities, and evaluate products’ safety after they hit the market. The HHS reduction in force will likely spare most of these employees.
But the cuts won’t make their lives any easier. One FDA employee told STAT they are starting to lose access to medical journals they rely on for regulatory research. Gutting administrative personnel and cutting down on agency resources may slow down reviewers and worsen morale.
“Eliminating those people, it’s just going to be more difficult from a personnel perspective,” said Brian Ravitch, a regulatory consultant at Olsson Frank Weeda who worked for the FDA for 25 years.
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