Not exactly. The reported plan involved removing records for as many as 35,000 vacant Department of Veterans Affairs positions by December 31, 2025. That is different from laying off 35,000 people. The available documents do not independently confirm that all 35,000 vacancies were removed or that the plan caused a specific number of delayed appointments or denied benefits.
The dispute matters because lawmakers say many of the vacancies were in health-care and veteran-facing occupations, while VA leaders say staffing reductions came largely through attrition and voluntary programs and that mission-critical care was protected.
What the “35,000 jobs” figure actually describes
A planned reduction in vacant position records
A December 13, 2025 Washington Post report, summarized in a December 19 Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee letter, said VA intended to remove up to 35,000 vacant positions from its workforce rolls before the end of calendar year 2025. A vacant position is an authorized job that has no current employee; removing the position does not itself terminate an employee.
The cited congressional materials describe a planned elimination, not 35,000 confirmed layoffs. They also do not establish that every position was ultimately deleted.
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Separate dates and separate counts
The vacancy plan concerned the end of calendar year 2025, while VA’s earlier staffing announcement covered fiscal year 2025, which ended September 30, 2025. Those time periods and measurements should not be treated as interchangeable.
Why lawmakers challenged the plan
The vacancies included clinical and support occupations
Data reported to Congress under Section 505 of the VA MISSION Act showed 42,518 vacancies in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. The Senate committee listed the following occupations:
| Occupation | Reported vacancies |
|---|---|
| Nurses | 7,560 |
| Schedulers | 4,400 |
| Physicians | 2,800 |
| Social workers | 1,900 |
| Nursing assistants | 1,650 |
| Practical nurses | 1,630 |
| Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians | 1,230 |
| Health technicians | 1,080 |
| Veterans claims examiners | 860 |
| Police | 760 |
| Psychologists | 710 |
The committee said more than 24,500 of the roughly 42,500 vacancies were in the occupations it identified. It also said VA would still have to remove 18,000 essential, veteran-facing vacancies to reach 35,000 even if every other vacancy were eliminated first. That is the committee’s characterization of the staffing data, not an independent finding that each position was operationally required.
“Vacant” does not mean “unneeded”
Lawmakers argued that an unfilled position may reflect recruiting difficulty, workload, or a planned hire rather than surplus capacity. Their statement said the length of time a position has been vacant is not a suitable measure of whether it is needed.
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How many VA employees already left?
Several figures describe the 2025 workforce change, but they measure different things:
| Figure | What it measures | Source and timing |
|---|---|---|
| About 484,000 employees | VA workforce on January 1, 2025 | VA announcement dated July 7, 2025 |
| About 467,000 employees | VA workforce on June 1, 2025 | VA announcement dated July 7, 2025 |
| Nearly 12,000 additional exits expected | Projected departures through September 30, 2025 | VA announcement dated July 7, 2025 |
| 30,000 fewer staff | VA-reported total staff reduction during fiscal year 2025 | VA Fiscal Year 2025 Agency Financial Report, signed January 16, 2026 |
| More than 40,000 employees lost | Departures alleged by the Senate in fiscal year 2025, including 1,000 physicians, 1,500 schedulers and 3,000 registered nurses | Senate report dated January 2026 |
VA attributed its reduction to normal attrition, voluntary early retirement, deferred resignation and the federal hiring freeze, saying those measures avoided a large-scale reduction in force. The Senate’s “more than 40,000” figure describes employees who left, whereas VA’s “30,000” figure describes its reported total staff reduction; the cited documents do not provide a single reconciled accounting of the difference.
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What VA said about protecting care
VA said mission-critical positions were exempt from its deferred-resignation and early-retirement programs. It also said more than 350,000 positions were exempt from the federal hiring freeze.
Secretary Douglas Collins said VA had been conducting “a holistic review of the department centered on reducing bureaucracy and improving services to Veterans.” He asserted that removing the vacant positions would have no impact on VA health care. The Senate committee disputed that conclusion because the vacancy list included doctors, nurses, schedulers, psychologists and other care-related roles.
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VA’s Fiscal Year 2025 Agency Financial Report says the department reduced total staff by 30,000, issued more than 3 million disability ratings and reduced its benefits backlog by 43 percent. Those are VA’s own performance claims; they do not demonstrate that eliminating vacant positions caused or prevented a particular change in care access.
What independent staffing evidence shows
Inspector General survey findings
An Associated Press account of a VA Office of Inspector General survey covering 139 Veterans Health Administration facilities reported that 94 percent had shortages in medical-officer occupations and 79 percent had shortages among nurses. Reports of severe shortages rose 50 percent. The survey cautioned that a severe shortage is not the same measurement as a vacant position, so it cannot convert those percentages into a count of the 35,000 positions.
Reported mental-health wait times
A January 2026 Senate report said the national mean wait for a new individual mental-health appointment was more than 35 days as of January 6, 2026, compared with the cited 20-day community-care threshold. Those figures are findings and claims in the Senate report, not an independently adjudicated causal study linking wait times to the vacancy-removal plan.
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Appointments and clinical capacity
The risk identified by lawmakers is that deleting authorized positions after substantial employee departures could make it harder for facilities to recruit, schedule and retain staff. The occupations listed in the vacancy data are directly connected to appointments, clinical treatment, pharmacy operations, mental-health services and facility support.
However, the available evidence does not show that the planned removal itself produced a defined number of longer waits, canceled appointments or denied treatments. Effects would also vary by facility, specialty and local labor market.
Disability claims and other benefits
Veterans claims examiners were among the listed vacancies, and the Senate said the overall staffing loss included schedulers and other personnel. That makes potential effects on claims processing and customer contact a reasonable concern, but no cited document attributes a specific backlog increase or benefit denial to the 35,000-position plan. VA, meanwhile, reported a 43 percent reduction in its benefits backlog for fiscal year 2025.
How to interpret later headlines
- “35,000 jobs cut” may refer to vacant positions removed from VA’s authorized workforce records, not 35,000 occupied jobs eliminated.
- “30,000 reduction” is VA’s reported fiscal-year staff reduction.
- “More than 40,000 lost” is the Senate’s reported count of employee departures and includes specified clinical and administrative occupations.
- Neither figure, by itself, proves how many appointments, claims or services were affected.
Bottom line
The strongest supported description is that VA planned to delete up to 35,000 vacant position records by the end of 2025 after a major workforce reduction. The plan was not documented as 35,000 layoffs. Because many listed vacancies were in health-care and veteran-facing occupations, lawmakers warned of added strain, while VA said its protections and workforce review would preserve care. The cited records establish the competing claims and staffing context, but not a measured causal effect on veterans’ appointments or benefits.
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