One Fifth of NASA’s Workforce Take Voluntary Departure Options

The options for NASA employees to voluntarily leave the agency to meet Trump Administration workforce reduction targets ended yesterday. NASA reports that just over 21 percent took the Deferred Resignation Program, about 3,000 employees. The agency estimates its remaining civil servant workforce will be about 14,000, a sharp reduction but still higher than the Administration’s target. Involuntary Reductions-in-Force (RIFs) may follow. The space community and Congress are concerned about how NASA will execute its programs with so much experience walking out the door especially since Congress is poised to reject the deep cuts to NASA proposed by President Trump.

In a statement emailed at 8:34 pm ET last night, NASA provided information as of that moment.  Employees had until midnight to decide whether to take the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) or two other options — Voluntary Early Retirement Authority or Voluntary Separation Incentive Program. Each offered different incentives to leave and the departure date for each employee can vary. Some must leave by September 30, the end of FY2025, others may stay until early next year.

“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.   — NASA

The Trump Administration has proposed cutting NASA’s budget by $6 billion, or 24.3 percent, from $24.8 billion in FY2025 to $18.8 billion in FY2026.  The civil service workforce would drop from 17,391 now (FY2025) to 11,853 in FY2026 according to a table NASA’s FY2026 budget request documentation.

The acronyms refer to Headquarters (HQ), Ames Research Center (ARC), Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC), Glenn Research Center (GRC), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Johnson Space Center (JSC), Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Langley Research Center (LaRC), Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Stennis Space Center (SSC), and NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) located at Stennis. OIG is the independent Office of Inspector General.

The numbers do not include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, which is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) operated for NASA by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Caltech makes workforce decisions for JPL based on how much funding it anticipates from NASA.  JPL laid off 8 percent of its workforce in February 2024 and another 5 percent in November 2024 due to the decision to pause the Mars Sample Return mission.

Congress does not agree with the President’s budget request, however. Both the House and Senate appropriations committees want to keep NASA at its FY2025 level. In addition, the reconciliation bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump on July 4 adds $10 billion for NASA spread over several years.

Among the obvious questions is what happens if final congressional action does keep NASA at its FY2025 level but a large percentage of the workforce has left.  A closely related issue is whether those who remain have the necessary skill sets to execute the missions.

In a letter to Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy more than 300 current and former NASA employees expressed concern about “non-strategic staffing reductions” as one of several issues. Duffy is the Secretary of Transportation. On July 9, President Trump appointed him to lead NASA as well on a temporary basis.

The employees, some who signed their names and others who chose to remain anonymous, used NASA’s existing policy directives on how to express “formal dissent” within the agency.  The NASA Voyager Declaration dissents on changes to NASA’s Technical Authority system that oversees safety and was developed after decades of experience with tragedies like the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident, closing out missions before Congress acts on the FY2026 budget request, canceling NASA participation in international missions, and other issues.

Regarding workforce, the Declaration says:

We dissent to NASA’s non-strategic staffing reductions because they will jeopardize NASA’s core mission. Thousands of NASA civil servant employees have already been terminated, resigned or retired early, taking with them highly specialized, irreplaceable knowledge crucial to carrying out NASA’s mission. — NASA Voyager Declaration

The aerospace industry and Congress are also worried.

In a May 30, 2025 letter to House and Senate appropriators urging Congress to protect funding both for NASA and NOAA, the Aerospace Industries Association warned:  “Ongoing efforts to reduce the federal workforce, combined with these cuts, threaten thousands of highly skilled jobs and may push America’s brightest minds to seek opportunities overseas.”

More than 60 Democratic and Republican House members led by Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), Ranking Member of the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology (SS&T) Committee, wrote to Duffy on July 18 with broad concerns about NASA implementing actions based on the President’s budget request before Congress acts on that request, including workforce reductions. The letter begins:

 “We write to ensure no actions are taken at NASA to implement the proposed funding cuts in the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Budget Request for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) during FY2025, encourage or effectuate actions to meet the proposed workforce reductions in the FY2026 budget request, or otherwise preclude the continuation of NASA’s science programs of record as constituted in FY2025 until Congress enacts full-year appropriations for FY2026 through September 30th, 2026.” — Letter to Sean Duffy from more than 60 bipartisan House members

At a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board (SSB) and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Thursday, Republican and Democratic staffers from the House and Senate committees that oversee NASA explicitly expressed concern about the ongoing workforce reductions.

Responding to a question about the status of FY2026 appropriations, Pam Whitney from the Democratic staff of House SS&T, and Maddy Davis, on the Republican staff of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, wondered if the workforce will be there to execute what Congress funds. Whitney spoke about the pending appropriations bills. Davis added the reconciliation bill, which already is law. The NASA portion was drafted by her committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Pam Whitney:  I think it’s worth considering that, should we get an appropriation, it may not be in September but should we get an appropriation at the level …. the House and Senate have marked, what does it mean to have thousands of people having left the agency? A lot of them GS-15s who have extensive experience and knowledge …. What is that going to look like?

Maddy Davis:  I’ll echo Pam’s last sentiment there. That is something that we are very anxious to see how that plays out with DRP [Deferred Retirement Program], particularly after we just did this big reconciliation provision for NASA. So is NASA going to be, from a workforce perspective, healthy enough to accomplish everything that we want them to be able to accomplish? That’s a serious concern. You know, are we going to give them more than they can really pull off? We certainly don’t want to put them in that position. But we have big, bold, audacious goals. NASA always has, and they’ve always done the incredible and redefined the impossible, and we certainly hope that they will continue to be able to do that, but we are very concerned about the DRP’s impact.

These questions apply not only to NASA, but many other government science agencies including NOAA in the Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They have already lost substantial numbers of staff through firings and RIFs.  Janet Petro, who served as Acting NASA Administrator from January 20 until Duffy arrived and has now returned to her position as Director of Kennedy Space Center, was able to stave off such actions at NASA.  Only 23 people have been involuntarily removed from the agency so far.

At a NASA Town Hall meeting on June 27, she told the workforce that her goal was to minimize, if not eliminate, involuntary reductions, encouraging “deep reflection” on their parts about taking advantage of the voluntary options.  Many did, apparently.

The NASA email last night emphasized that the numbers are not final and could “fluctuate” based on whether an employee withdraws, the resignation is or is not approved, and whether the departure won’t take place until after January 9, 2026.