USAID’s workforce to be slashed to just 294 staff

USAID’s workforce will be slashed to just 294 people — a reduction of over 95% of its staff — according to three sources and an email shared by Atul Gawande, USAID’s former head of global health, on Thursday afternoon. “Rubio claims that @USAID lifesaving assistance for health and humanitarian needs will continue,” Gawande posted on the social media platform X, referring to Secretary of State and now acting USAID Administrator Marco Rubio. “But his team just communicated that the entire agency will be imminently reduced from 14,000 to 294 people.” An internal chart laid out the specifics: USAID will have 78 staff members in its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, 77 in its Bureau for Global Health, 75 on its management team, 21 focused on the Middle East, 12 assigned to Africa, 10 focused on Europe and Eurasia, eight working on Asia, and eight focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. USAID’s Bureau of Resilience, Environment and Food Security and its Bureau of Inclusive Growth, Partnerships and Innovation will be eliminated, two former and current USAID staffers told Devex. The figures shared by Gawande came from Joel Borkert, USAID’s deputy chief of staff. They come after weeks of cuts to what was once the world’s largest bilateral donor and one day after USAID’s website announced nearly all the agency’s direct hires would be placed on administrative leave by midnight on Friday, Feb. 7. “These people worked selflessly for their country in some of earth’s most impoverished or dangerous places under GOP and Dems alike,” Gawande tweeted. “One long time foreign service officer told me: ‘Our government is attacking us. This is worse than any dictatorship where I’ve worked.”