Another 10,000 government workers sacked as DOGE rampage continues

Another 10,000 government workers have been added to a growing pile of sacked staff. They’re obviously not happy.

Another nearly 10,000 US government workers have been fired as Elon Musk ramps up the cost-cutting initiative from his newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump.

On Friday local time, 9,500 civil servants got the chop, on top of the 75,000 who had already left after the take-it-or-leave-it buyout offers which expired on Wednesday, prompting the latest intense round of sackings.

At time of writing, roughly three per cent of America’s 2.3 million strong civil servant workforce has been slashed under Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, abbreviated to DOGE.

The roughly 10,000 unemployed workers come from a range of departments, from veteran affairs all the way to nuclear security.

But one thing they do have in common is that most of them were still on probation, meaning they had less job protections in place than others. About 220,000 federal workers had less than one year of experience as of March 2024, according to the most recently publicly available data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Critics have previously called out President Trump giving Mr Musk near “unrivalled” power to reduce and even shut down government departments as he sees fit.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Mr Musk said on Thursday. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

What started off with jokes about a ‘bromance’ between Trump and Musk has descended into Musk having “unrivalled power”, according to critics. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Sacked workers have been left fuming from the ordeal.

Nick Gioia served in the army for 17 years before joining the USDA’s Economic Research Service in December. He’s one of the probationary workers to be fired on Thursday.

“I’ve done a lot for my country and as a veteran who served his country, I feel like I’ve been betrayed by my country.”

“What’s frustrating is that this administration has portrayed people like myself as the enemy to the American people,” Air Force veteran Shane Poole told USA Today.

“We are portrayed as lazy, incompetent, low productivity.

“It’s hurtful to see people cheering this on.”

People arrive to a "Save the Civil Service" rally hosted by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) outside the US Capitol on February 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. Picture: Kent Nishimura / Getty Images via AFP

President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday telling federal agencies to prepare for a “large-scale reductions in force”.

At first, the DOGE team planned to make the reductions voluntary with the take-it-or-leave-it offers, which would see those who signed up paid until September 30 if they resigned.

But not enough people signed up the scheme.

Then, earlier this week Mr Trump announced that government workers would be required to work in the office full-time, causing many staffers to question whether this was a tactic to make more people quit.

The DOGE team began targeting probationary workers afterwards.

The OPM warned agencies earlier this week that probationary employees would be fired unless they were high performers.

Government departments are expected to be gutted in coming weeks, raising concern about essential services.

Just a month after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, federal programs have paused hiring seasonal firefighters and stopped implementing preventive measures like removing dead wood from forests.

Reports also indicate that the Internal Revenue Service will lay off thousands of probationary workers despite being in the middle of the USA’s tax season.

Unionised federal workers and members of congress denounced President Trump and his allies including Elon Musk, head of the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (Doge) for purging government workers, all while branding government employees the "enemy of the people." Picture: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images/AFP

Employees at the National Science Foundation, and also the housing and urban development department are expecting particularly large reductions, with as much as 50 per cent of their workforce set to go in the next two months.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has also been hit, particularly researchers in its division working on cancer treatment, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure, said senator Patty Murray.

About 1,000 had so far been sacked from the Veteran Affairs Division out of 43,000 probationary employees. They said this would save the department $98 million.

Close to half of the workers still on probation at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others at the National Institutes of Health, are also being forced out.

The US Forest Service and the National Park Service is also terminating about 1,000 people in the latest wave of mass sackings.

On top of that, as many as 2,000 workers were let go at the Department of Energy, including 325 from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which, like it sounds like, is involved in managing the USA’s nuclear stockpile.

Sources told Reuters that these lay-offs had to be “partly rescinded” to retain essential nuclear security workers. The exact amount of jobs reinstated is unclear.

Originally published as Another 10,000 government workers sacked as DOGE rampage continues