An EPA spokesperson said the agency had 16,347 staffers as of May 30, down from 17,080 staffers on Jan. 1, a few weeks before President Trump entered office.
Some of these departures were already publicly known — for example, the agency announced in April it was firing 280 staffers who worked on “environmental justice,” which focuses on pollution in overburdened and underserved communities, including communities of color.
But, that means an additional 450 people have left the agency since the start of the year. An EPA spokesperson said the figure may not include the most recent applications for early retirement, since those are still being processed.
Staffers who are still on the agency’s payroll but are on leave — either because they opted to take the “fork in the road” buyout or because they are a probationary worker whose fate is pending in court — are counted as still being on staff in the figure provided by the agency.
Further cuts likely loom at the agency as the Trump administration more broadly seeks to shrink the size of the government through reductions in force.
The administration’s proposed budget for the EPA suggests payroll cuts of 35 percent for staff working on both science and other environmental programs.
And the agency is in the process of an ongoing reorganization, though it said that the first step of this reshuffle announced last month did not include layoffs.
“We want to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video announcing the reorganization.
The figures shared Tuesday show the EPA’s workforce has shrunk by more than 4 percent since January.
Stan Meiburg, who worked at the EPA for 39 years, told The Hill in an interview that he considered the reduction to be somewhat high for a five-month period — describing an attrition rate of about 5 percent over the course of a year to be more normal.
Read more at TheHill.com.
