The Trump administration announced Thursday that it was laying off 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department as part of a broad reorganization that reflects the priorities of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House’s drive to shrink the government.

The layoffs are a drastic reduction in personnel for the health department, which had employed about 82,000 people and touches the lives of every American through its oversight of medical care, food and drugs.

The layoffs and reorganization will cut especially deep at two agencies within the department that have been in Kennedy’s sights: the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those agencies are expected to lose roughly 20% of their staff members.

Together with previous buyouts and early retirements spurred by Trump administration policies, the move will pare the health department down to about 62,000 employees, the agency said.

The restructuring is intended to bring communications and other functions directly under Kennedy. And it includes creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America.

“We’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said, even as he acknowledged that it would be “a painful period for HHS.”

Kennedy asserted that rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. But he did not provide data to back up his claim; experts say that rates of chronic disease have been rising for the past two decades, including under the first Trump administration. Two 2024 analyses of the issue used CDC data from 2020.

Kennedy pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would reduce rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other conditions.

Inside the affected agencies, stunned employees struggled to absorb the news. Democrats and outside experts said the move would decimate agencies charged with protecting the health and safety of the American public, depriving it of the scientific expertise necessary to respond to current and future biological threats.

“In the middle of worsening nationwide outbreaks of bird flu and measles, not to mention a fentanyl epidemic, Trump is wrecking vital health agencies with the precision of a bull in a china shop,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who has been a leader on health issues in Congress.

She called Kennedy’s comments about doing more with less an “absurd suggestion.” Her sentiments were echoed by several agency employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

They said they worried not for themselves, but for the country, expressing concern about what the layoffs would mean for public health and whether putting safety at risk was really what Americans wanted.

Under the plan, the CDC, which handles a wide range of health issues including HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, maternal health and the distribution of vaccines for children, would return to its “core mission” of infectious disease.