WASHINGTON: The Defense Department said Friday that it\u2019s cutting 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and will put a hiring freeze in place.
\nIt comes after staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, US officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt. Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.
\n\u201cWe anticipate reducing the Department\u2019s civilian workforce by 5-8 percent to produce efficiencies and refocus the Department on the President\u2019s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,\u201d Darin Selnick, who is acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement.
\nProbationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.
\nPresident Donald Trump\u2019s administration is firing thousands of federal workers who have fewer civil service protections. For example, roughly 2,000 employees were cut from the US Forest Service, and an 7,000 people are expected to be let go at the Internal Revenue Service.
\nDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth has supported cuts, posting on X last week that the Pentagon needs \u201cto cut the fat (HQ) and grow the muscle (warfighters.)\u201d
\nThe Defense Department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.
\nHegseth also has directed the military services to identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump\u2019s priorities. It represents about 8 percent of the military\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The Defense Department said Friday that it\u2019s cutting 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and will put a hiring freeze in place. It comes after staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, US officials said. They said those …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77459,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77439\/revisions\/77459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}