GAO Finds NNSA Cut Its Federal Staff 11.9% as the Nuclear Weapons Workload Hits a Cold War High

The National Nuclear Security Administration, the DOE agency that runs the US nuclear weapons stockpile, has lost 236 federal employees since early fiscal 2025, GAO reported on 16 October. That’s 11.9% of its staff, gone in the same months its workload reached what GAO calls the highest level since the Cold War.

The agency is small and its budget isn’t. NNSA’s federal staff oversee a $25 billion annual budget and about 70,000 contractor employees who maintain the stockpile. They also run a modernisation of the weapons and their infrastructure that GAO puts at $200 billion over two decades.

From a hiring push to a hiring stop

The decline reverses a build-up that had only just worked. For years Congress capped the number of federal employees NNSA could have, and GAO repeatedly found the agency short of the people it needed. The cap was lifted in fiscal 2023. In May 2024 GAO reported that about 1,800 federal staff were overseeing more than 55,000 contractor employees, and that NNSA’s own budget plans ran about 200 positions below the level its 2020 staffing study said it needed.

NNSA then hired. Its federal workforce peaked at 1,991 early in fiscal 2025, which began in October 2024.

Then came the presidential directives of early 2025. GAO’s new report, which covers fiscal 2023 through the second quarter of fiscal 2026, says hiring was very limited from the second quarter of fiscal 2025 through the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Read as calendar dates, that’s January to December 2025. Meanwhile people kept leaving, mostly by retiring or resigning. By March 2026 the agency was 236 people smaller.

The losses weren’t spread evenly across support jobs. GAO says they hit NNSA’s mission-critical workforce, naming nuclear engineers and contract specialists. Both matter to a programme that’s mostly delivered by contractors. Nuclear engineers judge whether the work is right. Contract specialists write and police the deals worth billions that pay for it.

A year of disruptions

The 236 figure is a net number, and it hides a rougher year. In February 2025 about 300 NNSA employees were fired in the government-wide removal of probationary staff, and the administration soon reversed almost all of those dismissals. In October 2025, during the government shutdown, NNSA furloughed about 1,400 federal employees and kept about 400 at work. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that had never happened before. Senator Ed Markey noted that NNSA staff weren’t furloughed in the 2019 shutdown.

NNSA’s cut is close to the government-wide one. The federal civilian workforce fell by more than 11% between December 2024 and January 2026, as covered in our post on DOGE’s end. The difference is what the job is. A smaller NNSA still owns the same warhead schedules.

Rebuilding without a plan

NNSA says it’s hiring again. In April 2026 its Administrator, Brandon Williams, told lawmakers the agency planned to hire about 100 federal employees to rebuild after the losses, ExchangeMonitor reported. That would recover less than half of what GAO counted. Since October 2025 every federal agency has needed a strategic hiring committee to approve vacancies, as described in our post on federal hiring after the cuts.

GAO has also found NNSA doesn’t know how many people it needs. In July 2026 it reported that the agency hadn’t done a full analysis of the workforce needed to carry out its 20-year plan for science, technology and engineering facilities. NNSA says that analysis will be finished by 31 December 2027.

For Congress the question is straightforward. NNSA’s federal salaries come from a single appropriation account, Federal Salaries and Expenses, which Congress sets each year. The armed services committees authorise the weapons programmes and the appropriations committees pay for them. Both now have GAO’s count: about 70,000 contractor staff, a $200 billion modernisation and a federal workforce 11.9% below its peak.

GAO measured the federal side. Each nuclear engineer who leaves NNSA is one fewer government employee checking the work of the companies that run the labs and plants.