HHS to be restructured and lose 20,000 jobs

The Trump administration Thursday announced a major restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that will cut 20,000 full-time jobs.

The cuts include employees who have taken the Trump administration’s Fork in the Road offer and early retirement, plus an additional reduction in force of 10,000 jobs. It will take the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000, according to the HHS press release.

The restructuring also includes a reorganization of HHS’s many divisions to reduce them from 28 to 15.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in the press release. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

HHS is the umbrella agency that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other smaller divisions.