The thousands of DOE employees who exited the federal service amid the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s sweep of the agency has resulted in the largest staffing drop-off in the agency’s history — at least as far back as the Office of Management and Budget has been collecting that data.
In light of that exodus, DOE is facing a massive imbalance between budget and staff, a report published last week by the EFI Foundation found. Offices that manage Trump administration priorities — like the Office of Fossil Energy (formerly Fossil Energy and Carbon Management) and the Office of Nuclear Energy — are among those facing the largest imbalances between total budgetary resources and full-time staff, EFI found.
The report compiles current and historical data from the Treasury Department and budget requests prepared by the Office of Management and Budget. In 2017, the report explains, DOE had a ratio of around $5 million in funding opportunities per employee. In the FY26 proposed appropriations, that ratio is around $35 million per employee. (The office also lost thousands of contract employees.)
That’s because, even after the budgetary cuts and project cancellations already imposed at DOE, the agency’s science and energy innovation offices still have significantly higher levels of funding than they have in the past, the report found.
Historically, federal staff costs have been an extremely small portion — around 2% — of DOE’s overall costs. That’s true across the agency as well as in individual offices, EFI found.
Impact on operations
The reduction in force has been widespread across DOE, starting in February with mass layoffs of probationary employees, i.e. those who had been in their roles for less than a year. That was followed by stop work orders that placed some contract workers on unpaid leave, and the DOGE-led “deferred resignation program” which allowed employees who resigned voluntarily to receive pay and benefits until the end of September. By mid-March, more than 1,200 employees had resigned as part of that program. Thousands more took the administration up on the offer when it re-opened the program in April.
Unofficial estimates now place the total exodus at more than 3,500 employees.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has indicated that the agency plans to re-orient certain offices toward administrative priorities while shuttering others. Indeed, some programs previously managed by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations have already been transferred over to other offices.
OCED, along with the Grid Deployment Office and others, was tagged for mass reduction in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint authored by the Heritage Foundation, whose implementation is already well underway at DOE. That document also called for limiting the size and scope of offices like FECM and the Office of Nuclear Energy, neither of which were spared by the DOGE staff reductions, despite their apparent relevance to Trump administration energy priorities.
Now, the staffing levels at those two offices in particular are projected to be even lower than they were during the first Trump administration, the report said, despite the fact that budgetary resources and responsibilities — including projects and programs passed off from shuttered offices like OCED — have increased.
The higher ratio of budgetary power to employees is likely to hinder the agency’s efforts to support innovation and deployment, even in the sectors it prioritizes, like critical minerals and nuclear, the report found.
