The nationwide department hopes that the cuts will reduce its number of workers to about 372,000 employees, a 10% reduction from last year, according to the Post, which cited an internal VA memo.
VA spokesman Pete Kasperowicz told the Dayton Daily News that the Post’s story was “highly misleading,” and said the VA has asked the Post for corrections. (The Dayton Daily News sent a message to the Post Tuesday.)
“No VA employees are being removed, and this will have zero impact on veteran care,” Kasperowicz said. The “VA is simply eliminating about 25,000 open and unfilled positions, mostly COVID-era roles that are no longer necessary.”
These positions have been unfilled and most have not been filled for more than a year, “underscoring how they are no longer needed,” he added.
After losing some 17,000 employees nationally since January, the department said this summer it was on pace to reduce its number of employees by nearly 30,000 by the end of September, the end of the federal government’s fiscal year.
And on Tuesday, new government data pointed to large federal job losses in recent months, some 162,000 jobs in October and a further 6,000 last month.
“Federal government employment is down by 271,000 since reaching a peak in January,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
“The cost of these losses are only beginning to be felt,” Elise Gould, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said Tuesday.
A spokesman for Air Force Materiel Command headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said Tuesday Air Force officials have been working on their latest personnel numbers. A number of Air Force employees this year have retired or volunteered to take advantage of what was called a “Deferred Resignation Program.”
The AFMC spokesman was not certain when those new numbers might be released.
In late April, Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, told the House Armed Services Committee that the service stood to lose about 12,000 civilians.
“We’re going to lose probably about 12,000,” Miller testified at the time. “We’re assessing that right now.”
In November, the national unemployment rate stood at 4.6%, about the same as September, but up from January’s 4%.
Employment rose in healthcare and construction in November, while the federal government continued to lose jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Federal employees on furlough during the recent government shutdown were counted as employed, the BLS said.
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