The Pentagon has gutted its civilian workforce under Trump. The cuts were haphazard, watchdog says

• The US Department of Defense hasn't fully assessed its massive cuts to its civilian workforce, a new report says.
• Tens of thousands of workers were rapidly shed, prompting unforeseen challenges, the GAO found.
• It deepens the loss of institutional knowledge inside the Defense Department.

The Pentagon hastily cut tens of thousands of its civilian workers last year. Its leaders didn't fully analyze the impacts of those reductions then, and according to a new government watchdog report, still haven't assessed their fallout.

The changes, which included layoffs, resignations, and a hiring freeze, were made by the Trump administration amid a larger push to shrink the federal workforce. While the reductions produced some benefits for agencies inside the Pentagon, like automated workflows and savings, it also strained the remaining workers and diminished institutional knowledge.

The report, released by the US Government Accountability Office last week, found that in 2025, the US Department of Defense cut its civilian workforce by around 10%, or over 78,000 employees.

While DoD is required to assess the potential repercussions of these shifts, such as increased workload on other employees or costs saved, the GAO "found that DoD didn't consistently analyze the impacts of these reductions, either in 2025 or in prior years. DoD also doesn't have a plan to assess lessons learned from its 2025 workforce reductions."

Along with the 78,000 workers that were cut, a hiring freeze resulted in DoD hiring about 60,000 fewer new employees than in previous years.

The report also found an increase in the number of Pentagon offices and programs that are seeking reductions in workforce numbers, which jumped from 10 in 2023, 11 in 2024, and 13 in 2025 to now 28 in 2026.

Of the 14 offices that the GAO selected for in-depth reviews, "11 conducted some analysis of the impacts of workforce reductions" in that time period to inform decision-making. And of the 28 offices that cut workers because of the Trump administration's policies, at least three didn't give Congress explanations about why and how the decreases would be made. Those three were the Joint Staff, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and Defense Contract Audit Agency.

The GAO also noted that DoD currently "does not have a plan to assess lessons learned from these workforce reduction efforts." The office recommended DoD develop a plan for this. The Pentagon agreed with the GAO's recommendation but didn't elaborate on whether or when that would happen.

The impacts of these workforce changes raise some benefits. Per the report, DoD identified that some offices, like the Defense Logistics Agency, automated some processes, resulting in faster workflows and fewer manual tasks. Other programs like the Defense Information Systems Agency, reorganized their workplaces to "increase efficiency," the report said.

In some cases, DoD prompting voluntary resignations prevented offices and programs from having to make involuntary layoffs. There were also some signs of saved costs, like in the Defense Logistics Agency, which estimated $12 million in salary savings from government-wide reductions. DoD's 2026 fiscal year budget request identified $6.8 billion in savings from reshaping the workforce.

But there were also challenges. DLA's workforce capacity was strained, and there was an increased risk from high workload on employees and quickly developed processes, GAO said. The US Navy's reductions delayed shipyard maintenance and a loss of experienced civilian workers, "such as about 850 employees at US Pacific Fleet," GAO said.

The loss of institutional knowledge was also an issue. US Space Force faces readiness problems because of the loss of civilian workers, the report said, and the Defense Information Systems Agency lost "much institutional knowledge from reductions of roughly 10 percent," GAO said. Similarly, because the workforce reductions weren't entirely directed, voluntary resignations pockmarked agencies' workflows.

The workforce shifts have also created a perceived instability of government jobs, which will affect hiring young workers with desired skills in areas like the Defense Information Systems Agency. Some programs also noted that the cuts have created uncertainty in future planning.

The Defense Department is the largest federal employer, with 684,000 civilian employees, of whom over 40% are military veterans.

The GAO told Business Insider the challenges it noted in its report were the strongest examples it found, but a total assessment of the benefits and challenges was not a main focus of the report. It's unclear if there are impacts or detriments because of the cuts that haven't yet been assessed within DoD.

In the early months of the second Trump administration, the White House's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative led significant disruptions to the federal workforce, including civilian workers in the Pentagon. This included pushing for cuts, Saturday emails asking federal workers for a list of what work they accomplished in the previous week, and cancelling contracts across the government.

Many of the challenges presented by the workforce shifts are long-standing issues that organizations within DoD have faced, Dan Grazier, senior fellow and the director of the national security reform project at the Stimson Center, told Business Insider. Grazier pointed to the example of delayed shipyard maintenance and the loss of civilian workers at Pacific Fleet.

"850, that's pretty significant," he said, but the Navy has long lamented shipyard maintenance delays and issues. "Basically every year, the Navy and their spokespeople complain about shipyard capacity, so perhaps the cuts last year exacerbated that a little bit, but this is a long-standing issue, and Congress has repeatedly bestowed extra appropriations to the Navy to try to fix this problem, but then every year it gets worse anyway."

The Pentagon's loss of institutional knowledge is hardly a new problem, either. Constant turnover across DoD means offices are often catching up on processes and workflows. Grazier said that if the GAO's documentation of these challenges amounted to the examples in the reports, it could suggest some of the changes didn't create new or unforeseen challenges for DoD offices that they weren't already facing.

The cuts to the Pentagon's civilian workforce and broader leadership and policies under the Trump administration have led to a slump in job satisfaction. A survey conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service group, released in March, showed drops across DoD in how civilian workers feel about their work. The biggest decrease was in the Navy and the Marine Corps, which scored around 36 out of 100 in 2025 after scoring around 68 in 2024.