WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 24: Staff are seen working in the National Response Coordination Center at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters on 24 January 2026 in Washington, DC. A massive winter storm was bringing frigid temperatures, ice, and snow to nearly 200 million Americans. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

FEMA Workforce Reductions Affected Emergency Response Capacity, GAO Finds

By Claire Meyer

5 August 2026

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) experienced a 55 percent increase in employee separations in fiscal year 2025 compared to 2024, resulting in a loss of institutional knowledge and experienced personnel, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Many federal agencies reduced their workforces in 2025 in response to presidential directives. FEMA lost more than 4,300 employees—about 17 percent of its workforce.

Senior Executive Service employees were hit hard. FEMA had an average of 95 to 100 senior employees between 2023 and 2025; by 10 January 2026, 58 of them separated from the agency. The GAO report, FEMA Workforce: Staff Reductions and Lack of Planning May Impact Mission Readiness, noted that “a lack of experience among the workforce will make responding to large-scale disasters more difficult and less efficient. Officials from other regions reported that they now have a high proportion of leadership serving in an acting capacity, who are less experienced in their new roles.”

Employee separations occurred through voluntary workforce reduction programs, termination of probationary employees, and nonrenewal of contracts for Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees (CORE). FEMA is also under a hiring freeze.

FEMA did not base those workforce reduction decisions on a workforce analysis. Instead, it reduced its workforce without assessing if the agency had enough staffing capacity to meet its mission, including statutory requirements, GAO reported.

The agency also rescinded its 2022-2025 Strategic Plan.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,” the GAO report said. “Without a strategic plan that outlines clear goals and objectives, FEMA cannot effectively determine its future workforce needs, potentially putting its mission at risk.”

The latest workforce reductions add to more than a decade of staffing challenges at FEMA, which make supporting disaster response and recovery difficult, the GAO reported. The GAO added strengthening FEMA’s disaster workforce and capacity to its High Risk List in February 2025.

FEMA told the GAO in September 2025 that it planned to use staff augmentation strategies like its Surge Capacity Force to fill agency gaps during emergency response. But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Surge Capacity Force also experienced workforce reductions in 2025. FEMA officials said they had 240 employees available for surge support during the 2026 hurricane season—down from 600 in 2025.

As a result of its findings, GAO recommended that Congress consider requiring that significant FEMA workforce decisions be informed by the agency’s workforce planning process and that FEMA should to report to Congress on the results of its workforce planning process before the start of each year’s hurricane season.

The GAO also provided three recommendations for FEMA itself:

Issue a FEMA Strategic Plan that includes clear goals and objectives.
Develop and implement a workforce planning process that includes a workforce analysis, which assesses its workforce and mission needs, in accordance with the Office of Personnel Management’s Workforce Planning Guide.
Ensure that FEMA’s annual staffing plan is informed by its workforce planning process.