DOD to slash up to 60,000 jobs: Report

The Department of Defense is preparing to slash approximately 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs, a senior defense official told ABC News on Tuesday.

According to the official, the Pentagon intends to reduce its civilian workforce by 5% to 8%. With 878,000 employees, it plans to achieve this partly by not filling vacancies left by the roughly 6,000 staff who leave each month.

'We are confident we could absorb those removals without detriment to our ability to continue the mission.'

A senior defense official told ABC News, "The number sounds high, but I would focus on the percentage, a 5% to 8% reduction is not a drastic one."

The DOD is also reportedly relying on voluntary resignations and the termination of probationary workers to reach its goal.

It is unclear how many civilian employees have opted for the voluntary resignation offer. However, ABC News estimated the total to be approximately 31,000.

The Pentagon has attempted to terminate roughly 5,400 probationary workers, but the cuts are on hold as the move faces legal challenges.

The official told the media outlet that the probationary employees were not let go "blindly based on the time they had been hired" but that they "were documented as significantly underperforming in their job functions and or had misconduct on the record."

"The fact that someone was a probationary employee did not directly mean that they were going to be subject to removal," the official added.

DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth does not want the cut to impact military readiness, adding that the department is evaluating staff individually to ensure critical national security roles are retained, the official said.

While Hegseth has not yet publicly commented on the official's claims, he addressed the impacts of budget cuts in a leaked February memo obtained by the Washington Post.

"The time for preparation is over — we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence," Hegseth wrote. "Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit."

Hegseth contended that the DOD should implement funding for a "wartime tempo" while offsetting the costs by cutting "low-impact items," the Post reported.

The defense official told ABC News, "We are confident we could absorb those removals without detriment to our ability to continue the mission, and so that's how we can be confident that we don't need to worry about any resulting impact on the uniformed force."

The official noted that "some" of the employment cuts would impact veterans.

"There are so many critical skills and experience that veterans have to offer, and that's part of the analysis when we consider who is contributing to the core mission functions and who should be retained," the official stated.

The DOD did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes.

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