October 14, 2025
Of the 1300 people initially notified that they were being laid off, only 600 were actually a part of this round of workforce reduction.
Hundreds of CDC staffers who received layoff notifications have had their terminations reversed.
On Oct. 10, multiple government agencies faced the first wave of layoffs sparked by the government shutdown. For the Centers for Disease Control, 1,300 workers learned that their jobs no longer existed. However, this news turned out to be a fluke for the majority of these CDC staffers. In fact, only 600 were actually part of the government’s workforce reduction. Approximately 700 people were wrongfully led to believe that they lost their jobs and were reinstated.
A Trump official released a statement acknowledging the blunder and how those employees actually remained.
“The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services, according to CNN.
A coding error led to incorrect layoff notices, initially leaving many central CDC departments essentially unstaffed. Some of the employees who worked as staff published the agency’s flagship journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Other departments spared included the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the Global Health Center, and the Public Health Infrastructure Center. Officers at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the nation’s first responders to disease threats, also had their layoffs rescinded.
“It’s pure managerial incompetence,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, who resigned as a principal deputy director of the CDC earlier this year. “I used to think that chaos was the byproduct of this managerial incompetence. Now I start to wonder whether the chaos is the point.”
However, the actual layoffs will still prove troublesome for the CDC. These shutdown-induced layoffs have already faced legal scrutiny and public pushback.
Shah added, “These cuts will mean that when the next health crisis comes along, precious days, weeks, months will be spent getting ready when we should have been ready.”
The Department of Education also had hundreds laid off, particularly in its Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, threatening programming for disabled individuals. Other federal agencies that faced cuts included the departments of Commerce, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, and Treasury.
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