Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supervisors are warning employees to prepare for the elimination of approximately 1,000 jobs this month.
The anticipated dismissals, connected to federal workforce changes overseen by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, would affect FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees (CORE). CORE staff, who are contractual workers that typically serve two or four-year terms that are set to expire this month, support disaster recovery and emergency preparedness nationwide, HR Grapevine reports.
Three FEMA employees, including senior officials and supervisors, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, confirmed the dismissals to the New York Times.
A FEMA planning document obtained by The Times also detailed potential cuts of more than 11,500 people from a workforce of about 23,000. The proposed cuts include 4,300 CORE staff members and 6,500 surge-staffing personnel. The existence of the document was first reported by The Washington Post.
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FEMA officials maintain that the leaked plans were only an exercise and are not currently being acted upon, NLIHC reports.
FEMA’s staffing has dropped significantly through firings and early retirements in the first year of the current Trump administration. The agency’s workforce is more than 20% smaller than it was a year ago — down to 23,000 employees from nearly 29,000. These staffing reductions were carried out despite a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determining FEMA was operating at only 65% of its staff target and was short by more than 6,000 employees.
CORE employees made up 40% of the FEMA workforce as of 2022, according to the GAO. Ernest Abbott, a professorial lecturer of law at George Washington University who served as FEMA’s general counsel under President Bill Clinton, told The Times that CORE staffers help the agency adapt to changing needs associated with disaster relief and long-term disaster recovery.
“The whole point was to have an agency that had flexibility and could ramp up and down with events,” he said.
FEMA Employees Concerned with Homeland Security Oversight
The employees who spoke with The Times said they were concerned about Noem’s oversight of FEMA, citing federal law enacted following Hurricane Katrina that bars the homeland security secretary from “significantly” reducing FEMA’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
According to emails sent to senior FEMA officials in recent weeks, as of the end of 2025, agency officials could no longer renew CORE workers’ employment contracts without Noem’s approval. A required renewal form includes a section for a signature from the secretary’s office, according to The Times.
Trump and Noem have previously stated they want to shift more of the responsibility and cost of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to states.
