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Treasury and HHS Shutdown Layoffs: What Happened to the 2025 RIF Notices

The Treasury and HHS figures from the 2025 shutdown were counts of RIF notices, not confirmed permanent job losses. Here is what the numbers and later legal changes mean.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read
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The Treasury and HHS figures reported during the 2025 shutdown counted reduction-in-force (RIF) notices—not a verified total of employees who permanently lost their jobs. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs reported 1,446 Treasury notices and 1,200 HHS notices in an October 10 snapshot. Reinstatements, court orders and the law ending the shutdown changed what those notices meant; later, a September 2026 settlement rescinded the shutdown-related RIF guidance. Public sources do not establish the final personal outcome for every affected employee.

How many Treasury and HHS employees received shutdown layoff notices?

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs’ October 22, 2025 report gave a snapshot of notices issued on October 10. It listed 4,232 notices across the agencies in its table, including 1,446 at Treasury and 1,200 at HHS. The report said some employees had already been reinstated and that more notices were expected. These figures describe a changing set of notices, not a final count of lasting separations.

Agency or component Reported figure What the figure represents
Treasury 1,446 Notices in the Senate committee’s October 10, 2025 snapshot, reported October 22, 2025.
HHS 1,200 Notices in the Senate committee’s October 10, 2025 table, reported October 22, 2025.
Agencies listed in the Senate report 4,232 Total notices in that October 10 snapshot; not a confirmed total of permanent job losses.

The Associated Press reported on October 10, 2025, that an administration court filing projected well over 4,000 firings. It gave estimates of more than 1,400 at Treasury and more than 1,100 at HHS, while describing the situation as “fluid and rapidly evolving.” Those estimates are contemporaneous context; the committee’s later report supplies the dated agency figures above.

Why do some Treasury and HHS component numbers differ?

The committee report said Treasury notices eliminated all 102 employees of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and that at least 1,300 IRS employees received notices. For HHS, its table listed 1,200 notices, while its accompanying CDC account said 1,300 CDC employees were eliminated in the initial notices and that 700 were reinstated on October 11. The report does not reconcile the HHS table and CDC narrative figures. They should be treated as different reported measures in an evolving snapshot, not added together or silently substituted for one another.

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What happened to the shutdown RIF notices?

A RIF notice and a shutdown furlough are different processes. In its October 28, 2025 preliminary-injunction order, the court noted that they have separate procedures and notices; cited guidance generally described a 60-day RIF notice period during which employment status continued. A notice therefore did not by itself establish that an employee had already been separated.

Key dates in the 2025 shutdown

  • October 1, 2025: The shutdown began after Congress did not enact appropriations for discretionary spending.
  • October 10: OMB Director Russ Vought announced, “The RIFs have begun,” and agencies began sending notices.
  • October 15: Judge Susan Illston issued a temporary restraining order barring covered agencies from issuing new shutdown-related RIF notices or taking steps to administer or implement covered notices for employees in union-represented programs. The order did not establish coverage for every employee or every agency. At the hearing, Illston said, “It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost,” and added, “It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”
  • October 28: The court issued a preliminary injunction addressing covered shutdown RIF actions.
  • November 12: A continuing resolution ended the shutdown. Section 120 required covered RIFs taken between October 1 and November 12 to have no force or effect; the affected notices were to be rescinded, employees restored to their September 30 employment status without interruption, and applicable back pay provided.
  • December 17: A court order addressed disputes about implementation and the statute’s scope, showing that compliance questions continued after the shutdown ended.

The October court orders and the later statute had different scopes and effects. The statute’s requirements applied to covered notices, while subsequent court proceedings addressed disputes about implementation. Neither the orders nor the public materials establish the individual disposition of every Treasury or HHS employee.

What changed in September 2026?

A settlement reported in September 2026 by the union coalition and FEDweek says the shutdown RIF memorandum and OPM instructions were rescinded. Under the reported terms, agencies must remove shutdown RIF authorizations from their contingency plans and give 30 days’ notice if they intend to revise plans to allow RIFs during a future shutdown. This is a settlement and policy update, not a final court ruling on the underlying merits.

OPM also describes revised RIF appeal procedures effective September 2, 2026. Those procedures apply only to RIF actions for which an agency issued the specified notice on or after that date. They do not retroactively determine the status of notices issued during the 2025 shutdown. An affected employee should check the date and type of their own notice and consult current OPM procedures for the applicable appeal category and requirements.

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What should affected employees check now?

The law required covered notices to be rescinded, restoration to September 30 employment status and applicable back pay. The available public accounts do not verify, employee by employee, that every notice was personally rescinded, every person restored and every applicable payment made. For an individual case, rely on the agency’s written notice, personnel and payroll records, and direct instructions from the agency rather than inferring a personal outcome from a headline or an agency-wide count.

For future funding lapses, OPM’s contingency-plan instructions tell employees to monitor official communications. They say furloughed employees are expected to return on their next scheduled duty day after a continuing resolution or appropriation is signed, unless advised otherwise. The employee’s agency instructions govern individual circumstances.

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Do not confuse planned furloughs with RIFs

HHS’s FY 2026 contingency staffing plan is an operations plan, not a count of people fired in October 2025. It listed 74,210 employees expected on board before the plan and projected 23,128 furloughs under the plan, while noting that staffing can vary as conditions change. Those are planned staffing figures for a funding lapse, not RIF notices or confirmed separations.

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