Under the second Trump administration, the Pentagon has cut roughly 10% of its civilian workforce.
JAM STA ROSA / AFP
The Pentagon hastily cut tens of thousands of its civilian workers last year. Its leaders didn't fully analyze the impacts of those reductions then, and according to a new government watchdog report, still haven't assessed their fallout.The changes, which included layoffs, resignations, and a hiring freeze, were made by the Trump administration amid a larger push to shrink the federal workforce. While the reductions produced some benefits for agencies inside the Pentagon, like automated workflows and savings, it also strained the remaining workers and diminished institutional knowledge.The report, released by the US Government Accountability Office last week, found that in 2025, the US Department of Defense cut its civilian workforce by around 10%, or over 78,000 employees.While DoD is required to assess the potential repercussions of these shifts, such as increased workload on other employees or costs saved, the GAO "found that DoD didn't consistently analyze the impacts of these reductions, either in 2025 or in prior years. DoD also doesn't have a plan to assess lessons learned from its 2025 workforce reductions."Along with the 78,000 workers that were cut, a hiring freeze resulted in DoD hiring about 60,000 fewer new employees than in previous years.The report also found an increase in the number of Pentagon offices and programs that are seeking reductions in workforce numbers, which jumped from 10 in 2023, 11 in 2024, and 13 in 2025 to now 28 in 2026.
