Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signs a memorandum aboard an E-4B Nightwatch aircraft while flying over the Pacific Ocean, March 28, 2025. (Madelyn Keech/U.S. Air Force)
The Department of Defense is launching a deferred resignation program and early retirement initiative aimed at trimming the size of the civilian workforce, the agency said over the weekend.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a memorandum signed Friday, said the military is realigning the workforce and looking for ways to automate more positions in an across-the-board restructuring to “supercharge our American warfighters.”
“The net effect will be a reduction in the number of civilian full-time equivalent positions and increased resources in the areas where we need them most,” the memorandum states.
The Defense Department didn’t release the full memorandum, but said in a summary released Saturday that the moves would reduce duplicative efforts within the Pentagon.
The memo also did not specify how much of the workforce it intends to cut. However, the reductions are required “to put the department on ready footing to deter our enemies and fight for peace,” the DOD said.
The Pentagon offered deferred resignations in January through a program managed by the government’s Office of Personnel Management, offering participants full pay and benefits through September. OPM made the offer available to most full-time federal employees.
As of March 18, only about 21,000 of DOD’s 900,000 civilian workers had signed up. That’s far short of the roughly 50,000-60,000 employees the Pentagon wanted to register, according to a March 18 release.
Now, deferred resignations and early retirements are being offered under Defense Department authority “for nearly all DOD civilians,” rather than under the auspices of OPM, the Pentagon said.
“Exemptions should be rare,” Hegseth said. “My intent is to maximize participation so that we can minimize the number of involuntary actions that may be required to achieve the strategic objectives.”
The memo also calls for senior DOD officials to provide a “future-state organizational chart” of their respective departments that details how they will be streamlined.
The new organization charts must be submitted to the Defense Department’s human resource office of personnel and readiness no later than April 11, DOD said.
The Pentagon said it sees opportunities “through technological solutions” to automate some positions, “particularly at the headquarters level.”
