The Trump administration has driven nearly a third of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's workers out of the agency in a little over a year.
The CDC's civil-service workforce fell from 12,705 people in March 2025 to about 8,895 in May 2026, a 30% drop. That's according to data from AFGE Local 2883, the union representing CDC workers, reported by WSB Radio in Atlanta, where the CDC is based.
"We have lost nearly a third of our dedicated civil service workers at CDC in just a little over a year," said union president Yolanda Jacobs. "This is not normal. What we are witnessing is the dismantling of public health infrastructure our country relies on."
How the CDC got hollowed out
It started in the spring of 2025, when Elon Musk's DOGE gutted the agency with mass layoffs. In the months after, Mother Jones reports, many of the people whose jobs survived quit or retired.
The losses weren't spread thin. According to the union's numbers:
- At least 18 of the 135 CDC divisions the union tracks lost every single employee.
- So did 79 of the 556 branches it tracks.
- Two whole offices, the Office of Health Equity and the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, were eliminated in 2025.
- About 98% of the CDC's human resources staff are gone, Mother Jones reports.
This wasn't just the normal churn of government work. The union says the CDC's 30% loss compares with 19.4% across the federal government over the same stretch.
All of it has happened on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s watch. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the CDC's center for vaccines and respiratory diseases until he resigned in 2025, told The New York Times that what's left is a "zombified" agency, Mother Jones reports.
Who does the work now?
The CDC is the agency that tracks outbreaks and tells doctors and the rest of us how to protect ourselves. With a third of its people gone, that work is falling through the cracks.
Mother Jones reports that the CDC has done little to respond to high-profile outbreaks of measles, a food-borne parasite called cyclospora, and rabies. Measles alone has hit its highest level in 35 years.
And flu season is here. Mother Jones, citing the Times, reports that the CDC made no recommendation this week on a new flu vaccine the FDA approved in August. By this time in 2024, the CDC had already put out detailed recommendations for vaccines against respiratory illnesses. This year, Mother Jones reports, the CDC's vaccine advisory panel hasn't met once.
The same cuts, closer to home
The damage reaches well past Atlanta. The CDC's worker-safety institute was hit by the same DOGE cuts. In West Virginia, they fired the Morgantown staff who screen coal miners for black lung — eight weeks after Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she was "pretty comfortable" with DOGE.
Jacobs said the agency's workers "have dedicated their lives to serving the American people." And: "Protecting our nation's public health workers also protects our nation's public health."
What the numbers show
Under Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC's civil-service workforce fell from 12,705 to about 8,895 in 14 months — a 30% loss, compared with 19.4% across the federal government. At least 18 divisions and 79 branches lost every employee. It happened as measles hit a 35-year high, and the CDC has yet to make a recommendation on this fall's new flu vaccine.
Source
Union: CDC Lost a Third of Its Workforce in One Year — Mother Jones, September 2026. Workforce figures: CDC worker union releases data revealing decline in staffing — WSB Radio, September 26, 2026.
