It can be difficult to keep track of the casualties of the second Trump administration’s war on the federal bureaucracy and the thousands of federal government layoffs set in motion by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
One overlooked target is the Labor Department agency that oversees millions of retirement and health plans and that, supporters say, has an outsized impact on the financial security of American workers. The Employee Benefits Security Administration is charged with monitoring $12 trillion in retirement assets and 2.8 million health plans that cover more than 150 million workers and retirees nationwide. But since 2024, the number of staff at the agency has plummeted by more than 26%, according to federal data.
