The Pentagon said on Friday that it would fire 5,400 civilian probationary workers starting next week, in the first of what officials say will likely be a wave of much larger layoffs at the Defense Department, the government’s biggest agency.
“We anticipate reducing the department’s civilian work force by 5 to 8 percent to produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Darin Selnick, a senior Defense Department personnel official, said in a statement.
The department has more than 945,000 civilian employees. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said 17 specific missions, such as military operations at the southwestern border, would be exempt from the 8 percent cuts in the defense budget he has ordered for each of the next five years.
Senior Pentagon supervisors were told this week to expect the department to fire about 55,000 civilian workers worldwide, part of a push by President Trump and Elon Musk to drastically reduce the size of the federal work force.
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