More staff cuts reportedly are on the way at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to a report in The New York Times.
It reported that supervisors are telling their staff to prepare for the elimination of 1,000 jobs this month as part of changes that Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is overseeing at the agency, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
The Times reported that the cuts would apply to contractual FEMA staff whose assignments — typically lasting for two or four years — expire this month. Those workers, known as FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees, or CORE, help facilitate disaster recovery and emergency preparedness in communities nationwide and historically have made up nearly 40 percent of FEMA’s work force.
The dismissals were confirmed by three FEMA employees, including senior officials and supervisors, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
A FEMA spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the Times said.
More Job Cuts May Be Coming Later
The publication said that the dismissals are raising fears among FEMA staff that more job cuts are on the way this year. The Times said that a FEMA planning document it obtained detailed potential cuts of more than 11,500 people from a work force of about 23,000. The existence of the document was first reported by The Washington Post, according to the Times.
FEMA Spokesman Daniel Llargues said the document was “a routine, pre-decisional work force planning exercise.” and said there was no “percentage-based work force reduction plan.”
The FEMA employees who spoke with The Times expressed concern that Noem appears to be deeply involved in work force changes at FEMA. Federal law enacted in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina prohibits the homeland security secretary from “significantly” reducing FEMA’s ability to perform its mission of preparing for, responding to and leading recovery from disasters, the Times reported.
Emails sent to senior FEMA officials in recent weeks, and reviewed by The Times, show that as of the end of 2025, agency officials no longer could renew CORE workers’ employment without Noem’s approval. A form, reviewed by The Times, that is required to be attached to any requests to renew CORE employment includes a space for a signature from the office of the homeland security secretary.
The CORE roles are “term-limited positions that are designed to fluctuate based on disaster activity, operational need, and available funding,” Llargues said.
The Times reported that the 2025 hurricane season in the United States was relatively quiet and that no tropical cyclones or storms made landfall. Still, the Times said, recovery from disasters such as the Los Angeles fires last January and Hurricane Helene in 2024 continues to require federal resources, which are moving more slowly to communities or being denied altogether.
According to the Times, critics of the Trump administration’s approach to disaster response said further cuts to FEMA staffing would put Americans at risk.
“You cannot gut the agency responsible for disaster response and expect it to function at its best when the next hurricane, wildfire or flood hits,” said Rafael Lemaitre, a former FEMA official now serving on the advisory council of an advocacy group called Sabotaging Our Safety.
Job Cuts Via Firings and Early Retirements
FEMA’s staffing dropped significantly via firings and early retirements in the first year of the second Trump administration. Briefings on FEMA operations across the country issued each day reveal that FEMA’s work force is more than 20 percent smaller than it was a year ago, down to 23,000 employees from nearly 29,000.
CORE employees made up 39 percent of the FEMA work force as of 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office, and they help FEMA remain nimble and adapt to changing needs associated with disaster relief and long-term disaster recovery, said Ernest Abbott, a Professorial Lecturer in law at George Washington University. He served as FEMA’s general counsel under President Bill Clinton.
They allow FEMA to hire employees and move them around without being bound to traditional civil service rules, Abbott said.
“The whole point was to have an agency that had flexibility and could ramp up and down with events,” he said.
President Trump and Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, have said they want to shift more of the responsibility and cost of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to states.
While members of both political parties agree that FEMA needs an overhaul to better help communities, many Republicans don’t agree that staffing cuts would help accomplish that. The Times reported that a draft spending bill released by the Republican-controlled Senate last month includes provisions that would bar FEMA from cutting staff needed for key functions, including delivery and review of disaster aid.
Dominik Lett, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, said that while job cuts could make FEMA leaner, they wouldn’t necessarily reduce states’ reliance on the agency, or the flow of billions of dollars of disaster aid.
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