Veterans will be among what could be as many as 60,000 employees cut from the Defense Department’s civilian workforce, a senior defense official told reporters on Tuesday.
The cuts, which could include tens of thousands of veterans, come as the Pentagon looks to chop between 5 and 8% of its civilian workforce for “more mission-critical functions,” said the official, who spoke on the condition their name not be used under rules established by the Pentagon.
As of fiscal year 2021, the Defense Department employed more than 330,000 veterans, which made up 45.8% of the department’s civilian employees, according to the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM’s, most recent report on veterans employed by the federal government.
“There will be some veterans impacted by the workforce reductions,” said the senior defense official, who did not specify exactly how many veterans could leave the Defense Department.
While praising veterans who work for the Defense Department as civilian employees, the official said the department has to use taxpayers’ money wisely and ensure it is focused on its mission.
“Even within the military, there are times where you see the individuals will leave service when their services are no longer directly in the nation’s interest, and the same thing is true on the civilian side,” the senior defense official said. “And some of those people will be veterans that served in uniform previously. We’re certainly, again, looking at case by case as we plan workforce reductions. There are so many critical skills and experiences that veterans have to offer, and that’s part of the analysis when we consider who is contributing to the core mission functions and who should be retained.”
Veterans comprised 40.6% of all new employees hired by the Defense Department between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, the OPM report says. Of all the new employees hired during that timeframe, 26.9% were disabled veterans.
More than 878,000 civilian employees were working for the Defense Department in fiscal year 2023, according to the Pentagon’s most recent demographics report, which was released in December. That report did not specify how many veterans worked for the Defense Department as civilian employees.
If the Pentagon reduced its civilian workforce by a full 8%, it would amount to cutting 70,261 employees. If the department cut veterans at the same rate as civilians, 32,180 veterans could be out of a job.
The senior defense official declined to estimate how many veterans might be cut.
“I’m not going to speak to hypotheticals,” the official said. “I understand the calculations you’re talking about. That would be with the assumption that if we hit an exact certain percentage, based on the numbers of a certain day of DoD civilian employees and then linearly applied — I can’t guarantee any of those things.”
“No, there’s not some categorical direction that whatever the ultimate workforce reduction percentage is, that it has applied exactly with respect to veterans or any other category,” the senior defense official continued. “It’s a case-by-case basis. We do understand that some veterans will be part of the removal.”
So far, the Defense Department has approved close to 21,000 applications from civilian employees who volunteered to take part in the Deferred Resignation Program, the senior defense official said. The program allows federal employees to voluntarily leave their jobs by Sept. 30.
The Defense Department has also instituted a hiring freeze, meaning it is not bringing in about 6,000 new civilian employees per month, and it is seeking to remove about 5,400 probationary employees, but that matter is currently being litigated, the official said.
Since nearly a third of all federal employees are veterans, there is no way to reform the federal government without affecting veterans in some way, John Vick, executive director of Concerned Veterans for America, or CVA, told Task & Purpose.
Vick added that CVA supports efforts to maximize government efficiency to better serve Americans, and said the 2024 presidential election showed there is a public demand for government reform.
“That being said, veterans are people that have served our country faithfully; there is a net intrinsic value to having veterans in the federal workforce, and it should be a priority to fast-track those veterans into actually vital jobs that match their skillsets,” Vick said. “So, I would love to see a proposal to do that.”
Mario Marquez, executive director of government affairs for The American Legion, was critical of the Pentagon’s moves to cut veterans and other civilian employees.
“The proposed cuts within the Department of Defense should focus on purging outdated or unnecessary programs, or costly weapons systems and steer clear of jobs, especially those held by veterans.,” Marquez told Task & Purpose. “Additionally, any DoD cuts should not impact combat readiness, or diminish quality of life standards for our nation’s military families. Our armed forces are still facing a recruiting crisis. Policy and staffing changes should not deter the best and the brightest from joining or staying in the military.”
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