WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced it’s on pace to reduce total VA staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025, eliminating the need for a large-scale reduction-in-force.
- While VA had been considering a department-wide RIF to reduce staff levels by up to 15%, employee reductions through the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements, and normal attrition have eliminated the need for that RIF. The numbers break down as follows:
- VA had roughly 484,000 employees on January 1, 2025, and 467,000 employees as of June 1, 2025 — a reduction of nearly 17,000.
Between now and September 30, the department expects nearly 12,000 additional VA employees to exit through normal attrition, voluntary early retirement authority, or the deferred resignation program.
VA has multiple safeguards in place to ensure these staff reductions do not impact Veteran care or benefits. All VA mission-critical positions are exempt from the DRP and VERA, and more than 350,000 positions are exempt from the federal hiring freeze.
Meanwhile, VA performance continues to improve. Under President Trump and Secretary Collins:
- VA’s disability claims backlog is already down nearly 30%, after it increased 24% during the Biden Administration.
- VA is processing record numbers of disability claims, reaching 1 million claims processed for FY25 on February 20 and reaching 2 million claims by June — both achievements were done in record time.
- VA has implemented significant reforms to make it easier for survivors to get benefits, after serious problems during the Biden Administration.
- VA is accelerating the deployment of its integrated electronic health record system, after the program was nearly dormant for almost two years under the Biden Administration.
- VA is phasing out treatment for gender dysphoria. Frankly, this commonsense reform should have been done years ago, but only President Trump and Secretary Collins dared to do it.
- VA ended DEI at the department, reversing the divisive Biden-era policies and stopping more than $14 million in DEI spending.
- VA has brought more than 60,000 VA employees back to the office, where we can work better as a team to serve Veterans.
“Since March, we’ve been conducting a holistic review of the department centered on reducing bureaucracy and improving services to Veterans,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction — both in terms of staff levels and customer service. A department-wide RIF is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA. Our review has resulted in a host of new ideas for better serving Veterans that we will continue to pursue.”
VA is currently exploring several additional reforms to improve operational efficiency and service to Veterans, including:
- Today, the Veterans Health Administration, Veterans Benefits Administration, and National Cemetery Administration all run duplicative and costly administrative functions that can be centralized or restructured so they can each focus on their core missions of health care, benefits, and burial services, respectively.
- To that end, VA is reviewing the centralization of support functions to streamline operations and improve support to Veterans, including areas such as police, procurement, construction, IT, budgeting, and others.
- VA operates 274 separate call centers that are not connected. A centralized call center with modernized systems would lead to quicker and better service for Veterans and could be run with fewer staff members.
- VA has a proven payroll system that processes paychecks for more than 200,000 VA employees, but some 50 VAMCs still process their payroll. VA is already working to consolidate payroll for all employees under the VA Time and Attendance System, which will save time, money, and resources.