The Agriculture Department on Thursday said it will relocate more than half of its Washington, D.C., workforce to primarily red-state farm areas as it works to shrink its workforce under the Trump administration.
A memorandum signed by Secretary Brooke Rollins said that the reorganization is being conducted in lockstep with the department’s effort to get smaller, having already offered employees deferred resignations, voluntary early retirement and voluntary separation incentive payments.
The memo states that the department is not conducting a large-scale reduction, but notes that as of Thursday, 15,364 employees have taken deferred resignations. The agency had employed about 100,000 people as of last year.
