Keith’s note: this was just issued by NASA HQ: “NASA’s Deferred Resignation Program, Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, and Voluntary Separation Incentive Program are closing at 11:59 p.m. EDT Friday. Safety remains a top priority for our agency as we balance the need to become a more streamlined and more efficient organization and work to ensure we remain fully capable of pursuing a Golden Era of exploration and innovation, including to the Moon and Mars. Numbers are as follows:
- Deferred Resignation Program #1: about 4.8% of the workforce (about 870 individuals)
- Deferred Resignation Program #2 (including VERA and VSIP, in addition to DRP): about 16.4% of the workforce, approximately 3,000 employees
- NASA’s expected remaining civil servant workforce following both DRP programs, as well as normal attrition (about 500) over the same time period: about 14,000
- As more official information becomes available, we anticipate answering more of your questions.
I think the skinny budget target was to get under 12,000 (I had 11,853 written down on a sticky note from June). If that’s right, I wonder what happens next. If there will be a RIF, it’s probably going to be based on position/seniority, which means we’ll lose a lot of the term hires and younger employees. Combine that with the experience going out the door from DRP/VSIP/VERA (which has taken a lot of the senior folks holding deep institutional knowledge) and it’s not going to be pretty.
11,853 was the number in the president’s budget request (shedding 32% from the FY25 count of 17,391). If they still push for that, we still have another 1500+ to RIF.
The cuts weren’t evenly distributed by center, either. The worst was GSFC, which they wanted to cut in half…if GSFC only lost ~20% so far, they need to double that…
After the first round of layoffs at JPL last year I pinged a certain department for a service and was told “sorry we can’t do that anymore, those people were laid off”. What I’m interested in is what capabilities we lose by performing this slaughter.