The Trump administration has begun firing federal employees across a number of agencies in an effort to save money across the government, affecting thousands working at the departments of Energy and Agriculture.
The layoffs began on Thursday after the Office of Personnel Management met with leading agency officials and directed them to fire all employees still on probation.
Federal employees who have worked for one to two years or less are typically kept on probation, which makes it easier for agencies to let them go.
While the full scale of the layoffs remains to be seen, they have been projected to include thousands of workers who didn’t accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer, which expired earlier this week. Around 75,000 federal employees — less than 4% of the entire workforce — accepted the buyout offer.
It was not immediately clear how many energy- and environment-adjacent workers accepted the offer. The American Federation of Government Employees said Friday that around 600 employees from the Environmental Protection Agency opted for the buyout, according to Bloomberg.
Among those laid off were around 3,400 employees within the U.S. Forest Service, which falls under USDA.
Two people familiar with the plans confirmed the number to Politico, saying public safety employees and firefighters are excluded. However, those who work key jobs such as road maintenance or watershed restoration won’t be exempt from being fired.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is also being hit by the layoffs, with around 300 people expected to be fired, one employee told NPR.
NNSA, which upgrades and maintains the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile, is made up of around 1,800 employees. The agency falls under the jurisdiction of the Energy Department, which is expected to lay off up to 2,000 probationary employees overall, officials told Politico on the condition of anonymity. Dozens within the agency’s loans office have also been affected.
The layoffs don’t appear to be limited to Washington, D.C., as Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) told Reuters that hundreds of employees at the Hanford nuclear site and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state as well as the Bonneville Power Administration hydroelectric facility in Oregon have been fired.
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“These reckless firings will slow down critical cleanup work and make workers less safe — trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts,” she told the outlet. “These layoffs will hurt companies, workers, and their families across Eastern Washington.”
The Energy Department and USDA did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.