The Department of Veterans Affairs is walking away from plans to cut 83,000 employees through “department-wide” layoffs.
Documents and data obtained by Federal News Network, however, show how department officials planned to reach their workforce reduction goals, before scrapping the proposal.
VA’s former workforce reduction plan considered cutting 20,000 clinical staff from the Veterans Health Administration, including nurses and other frontline medical staff.
In recent months, VA Secretary Doug Collins repeatedly told lawmakers during committee hearings that personnel cuts would have no impact on the department’s delivery of health care and benefits to veterans.
“We’re going to maintain VA’s mission-essential jobs, like doctors, nurses, claims processors, while phasing out nonessential roles, like interior designers and other things — DEI,” Collins told the Senate VA Committee in May. “This is savings we can achieve that will be redirected to veteran healthcare and benefits.”
The VA planned to cut 5% of clinical roles across the VHA, largely through attrition, saving the department about $2 billion annually. The department also proposed closing “underused” medical facilities and “consolidating low-demand clinics.”
Internal documents show the VA envisioned cutting VHA’s overall headcount by nearly 33,000 positions — nearly 8% fewer employees than it had in September 2024.
For remaining staff to continue treating patients, VA proposed “modestly” increasing the patients-per-provider ratio, and shifting more appointments to community care and telehealth.
VHA’s non-clinical workforce would have seen the largest personnel cut under this plan. VA officials proposed cutting 3,000 human resources and finance positions, and reducing positions for maintenance staff, police officers and other support officials.
The Veterans Benefits Administration would’ve also shed about 7,000 under this plan. The department proposed further automation of claims processing and expected a “post-PACT Act” surge in claims to recede. The remaining VBA staff would focus on “critical claims.”
The department also envisioned cutting about 250 jobs from the National Cemetery Administration. Under this earlier plan, the VA considered contracting out some services, and adjusting staff at “lower-volume cemeteries.”
The VA estimates that its previous goal of eliminating 83,000 positions would’ve saved the department $8.3 billion in annual costs.
The VA recently announced that it is no longer planning on a department-wide RIF that would have occurred this month. Instead, the department expects to eliminate 30,000 positions by the end of fiscal 2025, largely through attrition.
The VA says it’s shed about 17,000 positions between January and June. Those cuts happened through attrition under a governmentwide hiring freeze, the deferred resignation program and retirements. Between now and Sept. 30, the department expects nearly another 12,000 VA employees will leave through “normal attrition,” voluntary early retirement offers and deferred resignation offers — “eliminating the need for a large-scale reduction-in-force.”
“VA has multiple safeguards in place to ensure these staff reductions do not impact veteran care or benefits,” the department wrote in a press release on July 7.
Some employees, however, remain wary. A VA employee told Federal News Network that the department’s announcement “leaves the door wide open for a RIF in certain areas,” such as VA’s Central Office (VACO) or regional Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISNs).
The latest VA data shows that about 7,500 employees in veteran-facing jobs have left the department so far this fiscal year. That includes a net loss of 1,720 registered nurses, nearly 1,150 medical support assistants, more than 600 physicians, nearly 200 police officers, nearly 80 psychologists and nearly 1,100 veteran claim examiners.
VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz said the net loss of 7,500 employees in veteran-facing jobs so far this fiscal year is the result of attrition, and that the department expects to rehire for these roles.
The VA is also bringing fewer employees on board. The latest VA data shows the department is seeing a 45% decrease in job applications submitted between fiscal 2025 and 2024, and a 56% reduction in new employees starting jobs.
Other internal VA documents previously reported on by Federal News Network show senior department officials, up until recently, were weighing the pros and cons of more significant workforce cuts. “
“Reorganization Implementation Cell” documents briefly available on the VA’s internal SharePoint site show that the VA, between April and June, still considered more aggressive staffing cuts.
One document, dated April 18, shows senior VA officials considered shrinking the number of VISNs from 18 to 10. In these preliminary planning documents, VA officials planned to consolidate as many as three VISNs into one.
According to the internal documents, VA senior officials said in April that a 15% workforce cut from VHA’s Central Office and VISNs meant the department would still have to cut 55,000 positions from the “field,” in order to meet departmentwide goals.
According to those internal documents, a senior VA official said he “does not know how it doesn’t affect veterans care,” if the VA followed through with cutting 55,000 field positions.
In June, the VA paid the Office of Personnel Management more than $726,000 to help oversee its reduction-in-force and reorganization plans.
According to an interagency agreement, VA said it was seeking OPM’s assistance because the VA “has never undertaken such a large restructuring, and does not have the capabilities, expertise or the internal resources to fulfill the requirement.”
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