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.”