20,000 Employees Left USDA in First Half of 2025

Reuters’ Leah Douglas reported that “more than 20,300 employees left the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the first five months of the administration of President Donald Trump, about a fifth of staff, according to a report from the agency’s inspector general.”

“About three-quarters of those employees left the USDA through a financial incentive program offered as part of the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce, said the report from the USDA’s Office of Inspector General,” Douglas reported. “The rest left through resignation, retirement, termination or other pathways, said the report, which used pay-period and other data to track departures from January 12 to June 14. At the start of the year, the USDA had more than 110,300 employees, the report said.”

“Attrition ranged from below 10% in some sub-agencies to as much as 67% in others, said the report,” Douglas reported.

“‘Losing nearly 20% of all USDA staff weakens the department’s ability to respond to challenges facing our farmers, leaves our food supply chains more vulnerable to threats like New World Screwworm and avian flu, and undermines efforts to drive the rural economy forward,’ said Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, in a statement,” Douglas reported. “A USDA spokesperson said the agency is ‘being transparent about plans to optimize and reduce our workforce and to return the department to a customer-service focused, farmer first agency.'”

Attrition by USDA Sub-Agency

Agri-Pulse’s Philip Brasher and Noah Wicks reported that “Rural Development was among the agencies and mission areas hardest hit by attrition, losing 1,745, or 36% of the 4,910 employees with whom RD started the year. The Natural Resources Conservation Service lost 2,673 employees, or 22% of its staff.”

“The impact on Farm Service Agency county offices was relatively muted. About 7% of the 15,837 employees the county offices had at the start of the year were gone by June. The rest of the agency lost 806 employees, or 24%, of its staff of 3,402,” Brasher reported. “The Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, an umbrella organization for FSA, NRCS, and the Risk Management Agency that coordinates communication, outreach, and collaboration among those agencies, lost 531 employees, or 33% of its total.”

“Among other large agencies, the Forest Service lost 16% of its staff, or 5,860 employees; the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service lost 25%, or 2,105 employees; and the Agricultural Research Service lost 23%, or 1,647 employees,” Brasher reported. “The proportional hit fell harder on some smaller agencies. The National Agricultural Statistics Services lost 275 employees, or 34% of its staff; the Economic Research Service lost 29%, or 84 employees; the National Institute of Food and Agriculture lost 35% of its staff, or 169 employees.”

California, Texas, DC Among Hardest Hit Areas

Bloomberg’s Ilena Peng reported that “about a third of the US Department of Agriculture’s employees in the Washington area left the agency from January to June, as the Trump administration sought to aggressively trim what it sees as excessive government spending.”

“More than 1,000 employees at the agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters departed in the first half of the year, according to a Dec. 17 report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General,” Peng reported. “…The moves came even before the USDA said in July that it would more than halve its DC-based workforce and relocate employees elsewhere, sparking concern about further departures.”

Progressive Farmer’s Chris Clayton reported that “in California, 1,268 staff, or 14%, left their jobs. …In Texas, 1,025 people left their positions as well, or 19% of staff. Texas had the highest number of job terminations of any state at 302 employees.”

“Maryland, considered part of the ‘Capital Region,’ had 984 staff losses,” Clayton reported. “Colorado had 880 USDA staff cuts while Missouri and Oregon each had more than 700 USDA staff leave their posts.”