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The Federal Reserve System announced a plan to reduce its overall headcount by 10% over the next few years. That is a target, not a confirmed tally of completed departures: the official materials cited here do not establish how many employees have left or whether the goal has been met.
What the 10% plan means
The target applies to the Federal Reserve System as a whole, including the Board of Governors in Washington and the 12 regional Reserve Banks. The System’s 2024 Annual Report says it had initiated a plan to reduce overall headcount by 10% over the next few years.
In a June 18, 2025 press conference, Chair Jerome Powell described a review of the Board and all Reserve Banks. “We’re doing a careful scrub of the Board and all of the Reserve Banks, and we’re going to find 10 percent of employees who can do something else,” he said. Asked about progress, he added, “We’re just at the very beginning.” Those remarks describe the plan’s early stage as of that date; they do not verify what happened afterward.
How the Federal Reserve says it will reduce staffing
Board measures identified in the annual report
The annual report identifies initial Board steps rather than a final system-wide list of job cuts:
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- A voluntary deferred resignation program.
- A reassessment of staffing for the United States’ hosting of the G-20 in 2026 and the G-7 in 2027.
- A strategic evaluation by the Board and Reserve Banks, intended to standardize operations and align them with strategic priorities.
Buyout and review described by Powell
At the June 18, 2025 press conference, Powell also referred to a buyout program and said the Fed would look for employees who could do something else. A voluntary resignation or buyout is not the same thing as an involuntary layoff. The cited official materials do not give a final breakdown of departures by mechanism, nor do they establish that every departure will be voluntary.
Why published Fed employment figures do not show progress on the plan
The annual report gives a baseline and a budget figure, but neither is a count of people who departed under the later plan. It reports 24,179 actual System full-time equivalents (FTE) for 2024 and 24,875 budgeted FTE for 2025.
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| Figure | What it represents | Why it is not a progress tally |
|---|---|---|
| 24,179 FTE | System actual employment in 2024, as reported in the 2024 Annual Report. | It predates the plan described in that report. |
| 24,875 FTE | System employment budgeted for 2025, as reported in the 2024 Annual Report. | It is a budget figure, not realized staffing after the plan. |
| 21,411 FTE | Reserve Banks’ 2025 budgeted employment, reported in the 2024 Annual Report; the report says this was 2.7% above their 2024 actual level. | It is budgeted employment, not a verified post-plan employee count. |
FTE means full-time equivalent: scheduled employee hours divided by the employer’s full-time workweek. Part-time hours can count fractionally. The plan’s target is expressed as a percentage of “headcount,” while the annual report’s employment table reports FTE. Those measures are related but not identical, so the 10% target should not be converted into an exact number of jobs by applying it to an FTE total.
There is a further timing issue. The approved Reserve Bank budgets were set in December 2024. A 2025 Reserve Bank budget transmittal memo says the formal budgets do not reflect later reductions in FTE forecasts, alignment with the federal hiring freeze, or the May 16 announcement. An approved budget can therefore differ from later staffing expectations—and neither one, by itself, establishes how many employees actually left.
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What is known—and what is not—about layoffs
The public statements and annual report establish a planned reduction target and describe early review measures. They do not establish that the Fed has completed 10% of the reduction, that 10% of employees have already lost their jobs, or that the plan is solely a program of involuntary layoffs. Powell said on June 18, 2025, “We’re going to—we’re going to hit that goal.” That was his forecast while the work was at the beginning, not independent confirmation that the goal was later achieved.
The cited official materials do not give a current completion percentage, the number of departures since June 2025, the final distribution between the Board and Reserve Banks, or the effects on services and the Fed’s work. The 2025 remarks are time-specific; a newer official update would be needed to make a substantiated claim about current progress.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why budget growth figures do not explain the staffing target
The annual report says actual expenses from 2015 to budgeted 2025 expenses grew by an average of 5.4% a year. It also reports a 2025 Board operating budget of $1,168.6 million, 11.3% above 2024 actual expenses. These are expense comparisons—not measures of staffing-plan progress or, on their own, the stated rationale for the headcount target. Budgeted amounts and actual outcomes should not be treated as interchangeable.
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