Pentagon to Slash up to 60,000 Civilian Jobs

The Department of Defense will layoff 60,000 civilian workers through employment cuts which amount to a 5% to 8% workforce reduction for the next several months.

Most of the workforce reductions depend on employee willing participation through a “Fork in the Road” buyout program where 21,000 people have taken the offer. The Pentagon will reduce staff through two channels during the next months: it plans to wait for workers to leave naturally while freezing new hires. 

This creates around 6,000 employee vacancies every month when staff members retire or switch to outside careers. The department ended its planned worker terminations because lawyers disputed its right to let go of probationary staff.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth supports these changes because military leaders have the power to hire needed people when needed. The official stated that even though the military might end up losing thousands of veteran personnel through these cuts, they still scrutinized all applications for voluntary separation to avoid filling essential position gaps. The initiative works inside larger federal workforce cuts managed by Elon Musk through the Department of Government Efficiency.