Layoffs begin Monday for nuclear weapons workforce, Energy Secretary says
Source: USA Today
Oct. 16, 2025, 4:10 p.m. ET
The agency responsible for designing, building, maintaining and securing U.S. nuclear weapons is facing staff furloughs and its contractors will soon experience mass layoffs due to the federal government shutdown, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told USA TODAY.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, plays a central role in the country's $1.7 trillion push to modernize the nuclear arsenal. Fewer than 2,000 federal employees at the agency oversee more than 60,000 contractors who do the hands-on work for testing, laboratory and production efforts across the US.
"Starting next week, we're going to have to let go tens of thousands ... of workers that are critical to our national security," said Wright of the NNSA contractor workforce. The secretary spoke to USA TODAY in an Oct. 16 phone interview. Portions of the agency's federal workforce received notice that furloughs could begin as soon as Oct. 17, according to three agency employees who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Department of Energy press secretary Ben Dietderich told USA TODAY that the department is "working very hard to push these furlough dates" by reprogramming funds, but he confirmed that NNSA federal staff furloughs could begin "as soon as (Friday)" or "as late as Monday."
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/16/nuclear-weapons-workforce-faces-layoffs-furloughs/86726076007/
They still don't get that almost twice as much of the federal government work was "contracted out", where Raygun started that ball rolling. They think it's cute to illegally fire feds, but when you cut those programs, you're cutting contractors and that is tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people now unemployed.
(from here - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/)
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