GAO Report on Staff Reductions and Lack of Planning May Impact Mission
Readiness

“What GAO Found:

The increasing number and complexity of disasters demonstrates the need to
ensure that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) workforce
can meet its core mission to help people before, during, and after disasters. In
response to 2025 presidential directives, many federal agencies have taken
steps to reduce the size of their workforces. In fiscal year 2025, FEMA employed
about 25,134 employees, on average. However, over 4,300 employees
separated from FEMA in fiscal year 2025—a 55 percent increase in separations
from fiscal year 2024 (see figure). These separations have resulted in a loss of
institutional knowledge and experienced personnel, according to FEMA officials,
and have exacerbated longstanding workforce challenges.

In 2025, FEMA rescinded its strategic plan. As a result, the agency has no
overall strategic direction on which to base workforce planning—a systematic
and continuous process for identifying the size and composition of a workforce
needed to achieve an agency’s mission. Without a strategic plan that outlines
clear goals and objectives, FEMA cannot effectively determine its future
workforce needs, potentially putting its mission at risk.

In addition, GAO found that FEMA did not base its 2025 and 2026 workforce
reduction decisions, proposed future workforce actions, or workforce policy
changes on the results of a workforce analysis—an assessment of the current
state of the workforce and a forecast of future organizational requirements.
FEMA took these actions without assessing whether it had the necessary staffing
capacity to meet its mission, including its statutory requirements. Without
workforce planning, FEMA is not positioned to determine whether it has the right
number of people with the right skills in the right positions at the right time to
meet its mission. “