40,000 workers gone. 88% of them treated veterans.
The Department of Veterans Affairs lost more than 40,000 employees between January and December 2025. That is the largest single-year staffing drop in the agency’s history. Eighty-eight percent of those workers provided healthcare to veterans.
The losses include over 2,700 nurses and more than 1,000 medical officers. Another 1,800 claims processors who evaluate veterans’ benefits applications also left. The Trump administration drove these departures through a federal hiring freeze and DOGE-mandated productivity reports that pushed workers out through forced attrition.
Then the VA made it permanent. In December 2025, agency leadership eliminated 35,000 unfilled healthcare positions from organizational charts. Local VA directors had one month to decide which vacant jobs to cut and which pending offers to rescind. These positions will not be filled because they no longer exist.
Wait times are climbing in the specialties veterans need most
The VA claims improvements. Independent data tells a different story. A study of 21 VA medical centers found wait times increased at 71% of facilities and in 64% of specialties examined.
Wait time changes at selected VA facilities, fiscal year 2025 vs. 2026
| Specialty | Facility | FY2025 avg. wait | FY2026 avg. wait | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neurology | Omaha, Nebraska | 27 days | 127 days | +100 days |
| Neurology | Dallas, Texas | 87 days | 130 days | +43 days |
| Mental health (new patients) | National average | — | 35+ days | — |
| Mental health (new patients) | Maine | — | 61 days | — |
| Mental health (new patients) | Maryland | — | 54 days | — |
Nationally, only 7% of VA facilities met the agency’s own 28-day standard for neurology appointments. The number of facilities meeting wait-time standards also dropped in oncology and physical therapy.
DOGE made it worse on purpose
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency imposed a blunt mandate requiring VA staff to document five accomplishments each week or risk termination. In Massachusetts alone, 855 workers left the Veterans Health Administration in 2025 while only 591 were hired, a net loss of 264 positions including 130 nurses.
DOGE also deployed a flawed AI model to cancel approximately 2,000 VA contracts and let another 14,000 expire without replacement. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s office documented the fallout in a Senate report:
“Harm from these cuts, such as delayed enrollment in clinical trials for advanced cancers, increased backlogs for services due to staffing shortages, and cuts to research studies, will continue to be felt unless the VA changes course.”
The VA lifted the hiring freeze in January 2026, but staffing caps remain in place. Facility directors report denials and severe delays in hiring approvals for clinicians and custodians alike. A VA inspector general report found staffing shortages 50% worse than the previous year.
What you can do
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Tell your senators to restore VA staffing. The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee oversees VA workforce levels. Use Resist Bot to send a letter asking your senators to oppose staffing caps and fund open positions. Text RESIST to 50409.
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Document your wait times. If you or a veteran you know has experienced longer waits at a VA facility, file a complaint through the VA patient advocate program and send a copy to your representative.
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Track the numbers. The VA publishes facility-level wait time data at accesstocare.va.gov. Check your local facility and share what you find.
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Demand contract transparency. Ask your representative whether DOGE’s AI-driven contract cancellations affected services at your local VA hospital.
Update, June 3, 2026: President Trump signed an executive order reclassifying approximately 8,000 federal workers as at-will employees under a new category called Schedule Policy/Career, according to NPR. Nearly all of the affected positions are at the GS-15 level, the highest tier of the civil service. OPM Director Scott Kupor confirmed the order strips those workers of their appeal rights and allows agencies to fire them without stated cause.
The affected roles include program managers and regional office heads, categories of positions held across the Department of Veterans Affairs. The administration originally estimated up to 50,000 positions could be reclassified and has not ruled out expanding the order at a later date. Democracy Forward president Skye Perryman said her organization, already in litigation over the underlying Schedule Policy/Career rule, will continue to challenge the order in court.
Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said removing civil service protections makes workers less likely to raise problems with leadership. The administration has already dismissed officials whose findings contradicted the president’s public statements, including the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Legal analysts expect the litigation over the rule to reach the Supreme Court.
Sources
- CBPP: Veterans have borne the deep cuts to federal personnel
- Government Executive: VA has shed 40,000 employees with drastic impacts on veterans
- AFGE: VA will eliminate 35,000 vacant positions despite chronic understaffing
- NPR: White House claims VA wait time cuts but new study paints a different picture
- Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: Blumenthal report on harm from staffing cuts
- Boston Globe: DOGE mandates push Massachusetts VA workers out while veterans wait