The Department of Health and Human Services is reportedly set to undergo a major restructuring that will result in the loss of some 10,000 additional jobs — and the National Institutes of Health has already started seeing changes, two NIH employees told NOTUS.
In a video posted on X Thursday morning, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the department a “sprawling bureaucracy” that he will seek to streamline with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency. The agency’s staff will be reduced to 62,000 full-time employees from 82,000, Kennedy said, with a focus on cutting “excess administrators” while hiring more “scientists and frontline health providers.”
“You know how bureaucracies work. Every time a new issue arises, they tack on another committee,” said Kennedy, adding that when he arrived at the department, he found that at least half of the agency’s employees “don’t even come to work.”
Kennedy said that the restructuring would “eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions,” and that the number of divisions at HHS would be reduced to 15 from 28. The eliminated departments’ functions will be transferred to a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America, he said.
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“We’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said.
An internal NIH employee webpage displayed a notice dated to Thursday morning stating that hiring activities for federal employees are paused “while NIH engages in workforce restructuring efforts,” according to a photo shared with NOTUS.
NIH was also visited by members of Elon Musk’s DOGE earlier this week, who were apparently looking for reasons to fire employees on sight, employees said. Multiple NIH centers and institutes sent emails to their staff warning them to not leave their badges unattended or computers unlocked.
“Also, if you see a stranger in your lab, please question their presence,” read one email shared with NOTUS.
At least one institute sent another warning email Thursday morning.
One NIH staff member said that on Wednesday they witnessed DOGE personnel enter an NIH employee’s office while the employee was down the hall talking to a colleague. When the employee returned to their office, there was a note from a DOGE employee saying it was violation of NIH policy to leave computers with access cards unattended and unlocked.
“I heard the [NIH] employee raise their voice along with that colleague the person had visited,” the NIH staff member who witnessed the incident told NOTUS in a text. “I looked out momentarily…and saw (I think) two personnel grab the employee’s arm and walk out with them.”
“I quickly went back to my office because I was scared and closed the door,” the staff member said.
The HHS restructuring plan will reportedly cut 10,000 full-time employees in addition to around 5,200 probationary staff members who were fired last month and 10,000 employees who have already taken voluntary separation offers. One thousand and two hundred NIH employees will reportedly be fired.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report the restructuring, the plan would centralize HHS’s “communications, procurement, human resources, information technology and policy planning” instead of delegating those tasks to the individual agencies.
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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