Pentagon aims to cut 50,000 to 60,000 civilians

The Pentagon is attempting to reduce the size of its civilian workforce by between 50,000 to 60,000 employees through voluntary workforce reductions, though it remains unclear if it will be able to meet that goal without possibly having to carry out forced reductions in the civilian workforce.

The Defense Department is currently carrying out a voluntary process to reach its goal of a 5% to 8% reduction of its 878,000 civilian employees -- a number that equates to 50,000 to 60,000 employees, a senior defense official told reporters on Tuesday.

"The number sounds high, but I would focus on the percentage, a 5% to 8% reduction is not a drastic one," said the official, who added that the percentage is one that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "is confident can be done without negatively impacting readiness in order to make sure that our resources are allocated in the right direction."

The voluntary process includes employees who have chosen to resign through what is known as the "Fork in the Road," a freeze on hiring new employees to replace those who are departing and the dismissal of 5,400 probationary employees who have less than one or two years' experience in their current jobs.

About 21,000 civilian employees have had their voluntary resignation requests approved under what the Pentagon calls the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), which allows employees to resign but continue to be paid through the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The senior defense official declined to disclose how many civilian employees in total had sought to opt into the Deferred Resignation Program.

ABC News has previously reported that 31,000 civilian employees had offered to resign under the Trump administration initiative with some of the requests being denied.

The hiring freeze means that the average 6,000 employees who join the Pentagon every month are also not coming into the workforce as other employees leave.

The Defense Department had also begun the termination of 5,400 probationary civilian employees -- which has now been paused by a temporary restraining order imposed by a federal judge.

The official stressed that the 5,400 probationary employees had not been selected for termination "blindly based on the time they had been hired." The Department has 54,000 total probationary employees, a term that refers to employees who have less than one or two years' experience in their current jobs.

Instead, the official said the 5,400 were employees who "were documented as significantly underperforming in their job functions and or had misconduct on the record." It is unclear if all of the 5,400 probationary employees targeted for termination fell into those categories.

"The fact that someone was a probationary employee did not directly mean that they were going to be subject to removal," said the official.

The official declined to offer what "reduction in force" steps the Pentagon might undertake should the voluntary efforts not reach the goal of reducing the workforce by 50,000 to 60,000 employees.

"I won't get ahead of the Secretary," the official said. "It'll be the Secretary's prerogative to designate how and when he might use any of the other tools that would be available to him to achieve the stated reduction targets."

There has been speculation that military service members may be asked to fill in for some of the civilian jobs that are being vacated or will not be filled by the hiring freeze, but the official said the goal is not to affect military readiness.

"We are confident we could absorb those removals without detriment to our ability to continue the mission, and so that's how we can be confident that we don't need to worry about any resulting impact on the uniformed force," the official said.

The official acknowledged that some military veterans would be among the civilians who would be leaving the department, but did not provide an estimate of how many.

"Some of those people will be veterans that served in uniform previously, we're certainly again looking at case by case as we plan workforce reduction," said the official. "There are so many critical skills and experience that veterans have to offer, and that's part of the analysis when we consider who is contributing to the core mission functions and who should be retained."