Labor Benefits Regulator Staffs for Enforcement Strategy Shift

The Department of Labor’s arm that oversees employee benefits is adding staff after a year of resignations and retirements, offering clues about the agency’s direction moving forward as it adds public-facing workers and reorients its approach to enforcement.

The Employee Benefits Security Administration, like many federal agencies, saw significant attrition in 2025 amid vast government cuts led by the Department of Government Efficiency. The departure of roughly 100 staff members has been paired with the arrival of Assistant Secretary Daniel Aronowitz, who since his confirmation in September has emphasized his desire to dial back what he has called “regulation through enforcement” and an at-times “oppressive enforcement regime.”

The recalibration of staffing reflects how EBSA, an agency responsible for overseeing more than 837,000 retirement plans and nearly 3 million health plans holding trillions of dollars in assets, is likely to handle the vast employee benefits system for the remaining years of the Trump administration.

“No matter how you cut it, the agency is just unbelievably understaffed,” said Tim Hauser, who retired in December after working nearly 35 years at DOL. “Any hiring is good because they’re so far in the hole, but they are really far in the hole, and I don’t think they’re hiring at levels that are going to fix that.”

The agency has in recent weeks started hiring some staff, including 40 additional benefit advisers, who handle calls from workers with questions or concerns about their health and retirement benefits. EBSA in late April listed a job posting for an unspecified number of employee benefits investigators in various regional offices around the country.

Still, the White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 proposed $181.1 million in funding for EBSA, a $10 million cut compared to what Congress appropriated in fiscal years 2026, 2025, and 2024.

As of February, EBSA had 583 full-time employees, according to data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg Law. That included 314 staff in enforcement and investigation roles, 112 benefit advisers, and 13 employees in compliance inspection and support positions. Other full-time staff include economists, auditors, legal experts, and administrative roles.

The 583 full-time workers is a drop from when the agency had 687 full-time employees for fiscal year 2025, which covered the final months of the Biden administration and the first nine months of the Trump administration, according to budget documents.

A Government Accountability Office report from 2023 found EBSA’s full-time staff had been steadily declining for years, from 946 in fiscal year 2016, to 837 in fiscal year 2018, to 825 in fiscal year 2020, to 752 in fiscal year 2021.

‘Targeted’ Hiring

A DOL spokesperson said in a statement that EBSA’s staffing approach is “targeted and mission-first,” and that it isn’t “simply backfilling vacancies.”

The agency is particularly focused on hiring benefit advisers on the front lines of assisting workers and retirees, the spokesperson said. EBSA is also adding benefit law regulatory staff, economists, training administrators, and investigators who will pursue “the most impactful cases while protecting all American workers,” the spokesperson said.

“We will continue to align hiring with available resources, invest in needed tools and training for our employees, provide outreach and education to both plan sponsors and plan participants, and focus on roles that most directly protect employers, workers, retirees, and their families,” the spokesperson said.

Aronowitz testified at an April 16 House subcommittee hearing that EBSA had “just hired 40 new benefit advisers” on top of the 74 it already had. He indicated the agency would hire more benefit advisers, who field hundreds of thousands of calls annually from workers seeking help with their benefits.

“When I look at EBSA, we do outreach, we do clear regulations, and we do enforcement,” Aronowitz said at the hearing. “The number one thing we do is answer the phone with compassion when Americans need help.”

Current and former EBSA officials said the focus on bolstering the benefit adviser program aligns with the agency’s approach under Aronowitz. EBSA has in recent months issued multiple advisory opinions to assist fiduciaries and plan sponsors; filed several amicus briefs, many of which have been pro-employer; and issued new enforcement principles that focus on “true bad actors” and require senior agency officials to review all major enforcement initiatives.

“He’s probably focused on hiring benefits advisers because those are the most public facing staffers, but we desperately need more investigators,” said a current EBSA employee.

Enforcement Approach

Aronowitz has spoken frequently about his concerns with the agency’s past approach to enforcement. At an event hosted by Mayer Brown on May 5, Aronowitz said he held a meeting with the entire enforcement team, including its top brass, that led to the creation of four guiding principles for handling probes related to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

“It’s my considered opinion that ERISA is a law of process and not a law of results,” he said. “And so we have told all the investigators our goal is not to second guess conscientious plan sponsors.”

Hauser, who most recently served as EBSA’s deputy assistant secretary for program operations, credited the agency with hiring more benefit advisers, who are often not reading off a script but engaging with individuals to try and resolve their specific problems. The benefit adviser program “is much more aligned with their basic message of compliance assistance and informal dispute resolution,” he said.

But EBSA lost roughly 40% of its investigation staff to retirements and resignations since the start of 2025, Hauser said, leaving one investigator for every approximately 13,000 health and retirement plans.

If Congress approves the White House’s proposed $10 million reduction in funding, it will put further strain on the agency, Hauser said.

“Everything has to be done by 590 people,” Hauser said. “You compare that to 4 million plans, and you come up with a really understaffed agency relative to this vast universe that is important to people’s welfare.”