Treasury Plans ‘Substantial’ Layoffs as Part of Musk’s DOGE Push

The US Treasury is planning to lay off a “substantial number” of employees through an effort to reduce the size of the US government led by Elon Musk, according to language submitted in a court case by an official at the department.

The Treasury is finalizing its plans in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative. Those plans “will be tailored for each bureau, and in many cases will require separations of substantial numbers of employees through reductions in force (RIFs),” according to a court filing.

The Treasury has more than 100,000 employees across several different bureaus, including the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of the Fiscal Service, US Mint and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

A Treasury spokesperson said the department was considering a number of measures to increase efficiency, including reversing Biden administration hiring decisions, and was looking at consolidating support functions to make them more efficient and improve quality of service. No final decisions have been made and any reporting to the contrary is false, the spokesperson added.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has emphasized that the DOGE initiative is very much focused on improving the effectiveness of the public sector — saying that DOGE stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, not the “Department of Government Elimination.”

Read more: How Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Reshaping the US Government: QuickTake

The disclosure by Treasury human resources official Trevor Norris was part of a collection of sworn affidavits filed in court Tuesday by US agency officials.

The Trump administration has been required to certify to a Maryland federal judge that it is complying with a 14-day temporary restraining order reinstating thousands of fired federal employees with probationary status, meaning they’d been in their current positions for less than one or two years, depending on the role.

The judge’s order applies to 18 agencies and their component offices as he weighs whether to impose a longer-term injunction that would keep the employees in their jobs.

Norris told the judge that, when the next round of layoffs happen, they’re likely to “disproportionately affect” reinstated probationary workers — since reductions-in-force are based on seniority. He didn’t say when the department expected to finish that planning.

(Updates with comment from a Treasury spokesperson, in fourth paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Daniel Flatley in Washington at dflatley1@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Kate Davidson at kdavidson60@bloomberg.net

Christopher Anstey, John Harney

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