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Former USDA employees interviewed in February 2025 said sudden terminations could slow work tied to farm irrigation, disease monitoring, rural housing and community services. Their accounts describe specific experiences and feared disruptions; they are not a formal audit of service outcomes. Later federal reports document substantial USDA departures and separations, but neither count is a tally of firings or a measurement of the effects on individual programs.
What former USDA employees said happened
Investigate Midwest reporter Sky Chadde published the investigation on February 25, 2025, based on interviews with 15 recently fired USDA employees stationed around the country. The employees described terminations beginning February 13, the day Brooke Rollins was sworn in as agriculture secretary. Some said they received late-night messages that they were immediately terminated; others described incorrect job information in a letter or supervisors who did not know the employee had been fired. Investigate Midwest’s report also recounts Jacob Zortman’s account: he sold a Kansas home and moved to Nevada for the job, received his work phone on February 14, then was fired the following Tuesday. Forest Service employee Bryan Mathis said he received a termination call on February 17, a federal holiday, and that his direct supervisor refused the instruction to terminate him.
The phrase “cut us off at the knees” came from Matthew Moscou, a Minnesota laboratory scientist, describing the effect he believed the push would have on agency work. The report said he had been reinstated at least temporarily by publication, citing his LinkedIn profile. That time-bound account does not establish his later employment status. The story also reported that USDA did not return a request for comment. Rollins told Brownfield Ag News that the department had made “significant reinstatements,” while saying more cuts might come and future changes would be “more intentional.” Those were contemporaneous statements in February 2025, not a complete count of reinstatements.
Which services employees feared could be affected
Interviewees described work that they believed could be delayed or left to fewer remaining staff. The examples involved distinct USDA functions, rather than evidence that every office or program was affected in the same way.
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- Farm and crop work: Employees described assistance with irrigation systems and work to prevent or monitor crop and animal diseases, including invasive plant diseases.
- Rural assistance and housing: The investigation cited Rural Development help for a rural police cruiser, a proposal for transportation to medical care in West Virginia, and housing-repair support. Employees also described environmental compliance reviews that affected when grant money for home repairs could be released.
- Processing and access: Workers said loan and grant processing and support for people trying to access services could face delays, while remaining employees took on additional work.
These are reported examples and employee descriptions. The investigation did not quantify delays, establish that all cited projects stopped, or measure the effects across USDA programs. Mathis’s statement that the cuts were “really crippling the agency” was his assessment, not an agency-wide finding.
What the later federal workforce figures measure
Two later federal reports show the scale of USDA workforce change using different data sources, date ranges and definitions. Neither figure should be described simply as the number of employees fired.
| Source and period | Reported figures | What the count means |
|---|---|---|
| USDA Office of Inspector General, report dated December 17, 2025 | 110,384 employees as of January 11, 2025; 20,306 departures from January 12 through June 14, 2025, equal to 18% of the January 11 headcount. | The OIG analyzed National Finance Center employee and timekeeping data. Its departure categories include dismissal, resignation, retirement, external transfer, the Deferred Resignation Program and other reasons. The 20,306 is an attrition total, not a firing count. |
| Government Accountability Office, report published June 9, 2026 | 91,047 employees on December 31, 2024; 72,049 on December 31, 2025; 24,597 separations during 2025. | GAO used Office of Personnel Management Federal Workforce Data. Separations include terminations, resignations and other reasons such as transfers. The available data do not show how many separated employees may have been rehired. |
The OIG and GAO figures are not interchangeable: one counts departures over January 12–June 14, 2025, while the other reports year-end workforce totals and separations during 2025. Their definitions and periods differ, so they should not be added together or treated as a direct count of the February termination wave. They provide aggregate staffing context; they do not verify the specific service-impact accounts in the interviews.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What USDA Rural Development said about its later plans
In a June 17, 2026 announcement, USDA Rural Development described a modernization and restructuring plan. The agency said the mission area has more than 3,000 employees in over 400 offices, field-based program-delivery employees would not be required to relocate, and it planned to consolidate loan and grant processing and modernize more than 130 systems. USDA’s announcement describes its plans and service intentions; it is not an independent evaluation of whether the employee concerns raised in 2025 were resolved or whether particular services were disrupted.
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