White House Announces Federal Layoffs Have Started Amid Shutdown

The White House Office of Management and Budget director announced the decision on Friday.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, joined by Vice President JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), speaks at the White House on Sept. 29, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

A top White House official announced Friday that federal layoffs have started, after the government shutdown entered its 10th day.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wrote in a brief post on X that “the RIFs have begun.” He is referring to a reduction in force, a formal term used by the government and corporations to refer to layoffs, downsizing efforts, or mass firings.

Vought did not provide more details on which positions are to go first. However, President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that layoffs were on the table amid negotiations with Democrats to reopen the government.

In a court filing on Oct. 10, the administration said it began issuing RIF notices to more than 4,000 employees across multiple departments. The Departments of Health and Human Services (1,100–1,200), Treasury (1,446), and Education (466) have the highest approximate numbers of employees who were receiving notices.

A number of nonessential employees were furloughed in the early morning hours of Oct. 1, when funding for the government stopped as the Senate hit an impasse after Democrats sought to add conditions to a stopgap funding measure. Since then, attempts to pass a funding resolution have failed in the Senate, which requires 60 votes, with the latest attempt failing on Thursday.

The White House previewed that it would take advantage of the government shutdown that began on Oct. 1 to further downsize the government as a cost-cutting measure, telling all federal agencies to submit their reduction-in-force plans to the budget office for its review.

The memo said that for federal programs whose funding would lapse during a government shutdown, “such programs are no longer statutorily required to be carried out.”

Earlier this week, top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said that layoffs could be coming if no headway is made on reopening the government.

“I think that if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs,” Hassett told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters in the White House that he would start the layoffs in “four or five days” if the shutdown persists.

“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” the president said, but added, “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

Since taking office, Trump has signed executive orders and released memos to slash the size and scope of the federal workforce, with an emphasis on targeting “waste, fraud, and abuse” within the government.

While it’s not clear how many workers have been laid off this year, a group called the Partnership for Public Service says that more than 201,000 federal workers have left the government as of Sept. 23.

While the House has passed a stopgap funding bill, it has failed in the Senate. Both sides have accused one another of causing the shutdown, and it’s unclear if any headway has been made as of Friday.

Democratic leaders have demanded the inclusion of extended health care subsidies for Americans who get their coverage through the Affordable Care Act. But the GOP said that any bill extending coverage should be considered separately and not be inserted into government funding legislation, because such policies will not expire until the end of the year.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticized Republicans and Trump on the Senate floor on Thursday.

“Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown, the worse it gets for Americans and the clearer it becomes who is fighting for them,” he said.

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on the floor that “the longer this goes on, the more the American people realize that Democrats own this shutdown.”

Sam Dorman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.