Nearly 95,000 Federal Science Employees Have Left Government Since Trump Took Office

Details

Since President Trump's second inauguration on January 20, 2025, the federal government has shed a significant share of its scientific workforce through a combination of mass layoffs, buyout offers, grant freezes, and policy restrictions that have made research untenable for many scientists. The losses span virtually every major science agency, from weather forecasters to cancer researchers to infectious disease specialists.

Scale of the Departures

The federal government's science workforce lost nearly 95,000 employees—11.9%—between September 2024 and December 2025, according to an analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan good-government group. More than a third of civil servants who have recently been laid off worked at a science agency.

A Science magazine analysis of 14 research agencies found that departures outnumbered new hires by a ratio of 11 to one in 2025, resulting in a net loss of more than 10,000 employees holding STEM Ph.D.s. Across those departing scientists, vast amounts of accumulated federal work experience were lost. Every one of the 14 agencies examined lost far more STEM Ph.D.s in 2025 than in 2024.

Most who left were not fired outright. Roughly four in five either retired, quit, had appointments expire, or transferred to a different job, according to federal data. The Trump administration's campaign to eliminate workers perceived as disloyal, combined with buyout offers and an atmosphere of funding uncertainty, drove many to leave years before they had planned.

Across fiscal 2025, federal agencies obligated $16.5 billion in scientific research and development contracts—a 23% decrease from fiscal 2024.

Agency-by-Agency Impact

National Institutes of Health

The NIH workforce has plummeted to about 17,100 people—its lowest level in at least two decades. Only a few years ago, the NIH workforce was growing steadily, from roughly 17,700 employees in fiscal 2019 to around 21,100 in fiscal 2024. The agency lost about 4,400 people—more than 20% of its workforce—during Trump's second term.

By June 2025, the NIH had cut about 2,100 grants worth around $9.5 billion. No previous administration had carried out such broad cuts to existing grants. Researchers whose grants were canceled included specialists in cancer immunotherapy, tick-borne diseases, addiction prevention, and genomics.

Scientists who left describe an agency transformed. In a January op-ed, a group of NIH scientists said they resigned in protest of an administration "that treats science not as a process for building knowledge, but as a means to advance its political agenda."

NOAA and the National Weather Service

Layoffs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began on February 27, 2025, when 880 employees—approximately 5% of the organization—were fired. The administration stated that no critical employees such as National Weather Service meteorologists were cut, though a source within the NWS reported to CBS News that meteorologists were included.

The National Weather Service lost more than 550 people since the start of Trump's second term—about the same number the agency lost in the 15 years between 2010 and 2025, according to Capitol Meteorologics. As of mid-2025, 30 of its 122 weather forecast offices lacked their most experienced official—the meteorologist-in-charge—including offices covering New York City, Cleveland, Houston, and Tampa. There is not a single manager in place at the hurricane-prone Houston-Galveston forecast office.

There are also more than 90 vacancies among staff responsible for repairing NWS Doppler radars and automated surface weather observation stations, greatly raising the likelihood of prolonged equipment outages that could affect air travel.

Among those fired was Andy Hazelton, a hurricane modeling specialist with a doctorate who had helped develop NOAA's next-generation hurricane forecasting system. Hazelton joined NOAA's Environmental Modeling Center on the October day that Hurricane Milton hit the Florida coastline, then was fired. His work involved using supercomputers to advance hurricane forecasting. "There's a lot of expertise that got lost on this," he said.

The cuts also struck a team of around a dozen chief meteorologists at offices in the central U.S.—a tornado-prone region. At least four meteorologists with more than 30 years of experience at the NWS announced on social media that their final day had come.

Also among those let go: Kayla Besong, a physical scientist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center who described herself as "an essential employee, part of a 24/7 safety watch." She was part of a team of 12 who programmed the systems that determine whether parts of the U.S. coastline are at risk and issued tsunami alerts; two people were required to be working at all times.

NASA

NASA lost 4,890 people, including more than 2,000 senior-level staff. The agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies—which has maintained a record of global surface temperatures going back to 1880 and operates a key climate modeling system—was effectively shuttered in May 2025, with its Manhattan office lease canceled and staff forced to work from home.

In March 2026, Kate Marvel, a widely known climate scientist and author, announced her resignation from NASA after her internally funded science projects went unfunded and proposals fell into what she described as "a black hole." She joined an estimated 95,000 employees who had left federal science agencies.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has stated he wants the agency to focus on space exploration rather than climate science. "For NASA to assemble scientists and put out papers on politically charged issues, whether or not this is an impending climate catastrophe, is not helpful to the broader NASA mission," he said in March 2025.

Other Agencies

Obligations for scientific research and development contracts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decreased by 79% between fiscal 2024 and 2025. Obligations at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went down by 100% during the same period.

The National Science Foundation lost 40% of its total pre-Trump Ph.D. workforce by late 2025—the largest percentage drop at any agency examined. NSF eliminated three-quarters of its academic "rotator" positions, in which university researchers temporarily join the agency.

Members of the technical staff at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear arsenal, were fired in February 2025; attempts to contact them for rehiring failed because their emails had been disconnected. The Department of Agriculture fired several scientists working on the ongoing avian flu outbreak and attempted to rehire them. Members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service were told their positions were eliminated, but the decision was later reversed after an outcry.

Public Safety Concerns

Experts have raised alarms that the workforce reductions are not merely a matter of research capacity, but of immediate public safety. Former NOAA chief Rick Spinrad cautioned that cuts to critical weather personnel could "kill a few thousand Americans every year."

Meteorologist and hurricane modeling specialist Hazelton said of the staffing losses: "It's hard to say for sure, but with fewer people working on upgrades to the models, and fewer people working on collecting the data that goes into these models, I think it's quite possible that the model accuracy will not have continued the improvement that we've seen over the last five, 10, 15 years for hurricanes. We may start to lose those improvements or even potentially reverse some of the skill."

The federal government no longer tracks the cost of major natural disasters like hurricanes and droughts through its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database. The nonprofit Climate Central has taken over publishing that database, though its director acknowledged the limits: "The reality is that even collectively, all of the U.S.-based climate and environmental nonprofits don't have the same capacity as the federal government."

Some active federal scientists have begun self-censoring. A scientist employed at a federal agency in the Midwest, who asked to remain anonymous, said that even without a written directive, they had found themselves avoiding the term "climate change" during public events because it had become so polarized. "We're still going to do climate change research, right, but we're going to call it 'weather extremes,'" said one state climatologist. "You know, it feels dirty."

Research Pipeline

Beyond current operational gaps, scientists warn of damage to the long-term research pipeline. In total, federal science agencies lost about 20% of their workforce, with an exodus of more than 25,000 people, many of whom were at early career stages. Remaining staff at agencies such as the NIH and the NSF say they struggle to keep up with the workload, which includes approving research grants.

By February 2025, concerns about "brain drain" were already surfacing, and 75% of scientists responding to a March survey by Nature were considering leaving the country.

During the 2025–26 academic year, new international student enrollment at U.S. universities fell markedly, with preliminary data showing a 17% decline—the smallest number of new international enrollments in a decade outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of those universities experiencing declines, 96% cited visa-application concerns as a contributing factor.

Historical Context

Reducing the federal workforce is not a uniquely Trump phenomenon, and comparisons to past administrations are worth making to avoid overstating what is unusual here.

Clinton cut over 377,000 federal employees between 1993 and 1999 — a larger absolute reduction than what has occurred under Trump so far, and roughly 20% of the civilian workforce at the time. Reagan's first two years produced reductions of 66,000 federal workers, though he reversed course and hired a net 240,000 over his full term. Calls to shrink the federal bureaucracy are a longstanding bipartisan impulse.

However, analysts and historians have identified three features of the current reductions that are genuinely distinct from prior precedents:

Process and congressional involvement. Clinton's buyout program was authorized by the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994, which passed by wide bipartisan margins — 391-17 in the House and 99-1 in the Senate — following a six-month review process. Trump's approach has proceeded without equivalent congressional authorization or review. Elaine Kamarck, who led Clinton's effort and is now at the Brookings Institution, noted: "We were not sued because we stayed well within the law. We did not have nearly the blowback that's going on now."

Where the cuts fell. Nearly three-fourths of Clinton's workforce reduction came from the Department of Defense, reflecting post-Cold War restructuring that was already underway. The current cuts are concentrated in civilian science and public safety agencies — NIH, NOAA, NASA, NSF, EPA — which serve fundamentally different operational functions than the defense bureaucracy.

Cancellation of existing grants. By June 2025, NIH had clawed back about 2,100 already-awarded grants worth around $9.5 billion. No previous administration had done this at scale. Cutting headcount reduces future capacity; canceling in-progress research destroys work already underway and breaks long-term scientific relationships with universities and research institutions.

The Niskanen Center, a center-right think tank, noted that Clinton's own approach — while more orderly — ultimately damaged long-term government capacity by focusing on headcount over function: "In retrospect, by focusing on what they could control — namely, headcount reductions — the Clinton team succeeded in making good on the President's promises but at the expense of long-term state capacity." That critique applies with equal or greater force to the current reductions.

Public Support for Science

The exodus of federal scientists is unfolding despite broad, bipartisan public support for science. A Pew Research Center survey released in January 2026 found that 77% of U.S. adults have at least "a fair amount" of confidence in scientists to act in the public's best interests—rating them roughly on par with the military and above journalists, business leaders, and elected officials. Confidence runs higher among Democrats (90%) than Republicans (65%), and Republican confidence fell about 22 percentage points during the pandemic (from April 2020 to December 2021) before stabilizing, but a clear majority of Republicans still express it. Support for public funding is similarly broad: 84% of Americans—including 76% of Republicans and 93% of Democrats—call government investment in scientific research worthwhile, though a slight majority of Republicans (54%) say private investment alone could ensure sufficient progress. The workforce reductions, in other words, ran against rather than with the grain of public opinion about the scientific enterprise.

Administration Response

Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the agency had shifted to focus on "evidence-based research" over "ideological agendas," adding that the NIH is still recruiting "the best and brightest" and advancing high-quality science. "A major reset was overdue. HHS has taken action to streamline operations, reduce redundancies, and return to pre-pandemic employment levels," she said.

The Partnership for Public Service noted that not all science spending was cut. Obligations for research contracts at the FDA grew by 72% between fiscal 2024 and 2025, and spending on contracts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology increased by 108% during the same period.

Across fiscal 2026 appropriations bills, Congress largely rejected Trump's proposed budget cuts to science agencies. For example, Trump requested that lawmakers cut NASA science spending in half, but appropriators mostly kept existing funding levels in place. Still, the Trump administration managed to slash government science spending by canceling grants at agencies like the NIH and the National Science Foundation.

Ted Nordhaus, executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, offered a mixed assessment: while calling it "unfortunate" that prominent scientists are leaving and saying the cuts have "gone too far," he also argued that "a bunch of influential scientists allowed the science to get politicized" under the Biden administration, which he said provoked the current backlash.