GSA Head Warns Layoffs, Office Closures Are Coming As Agency Aims To Slash Budget
Job cuts are coming to the General Services Administration as it seeks to cut its budget in half amid broader federal cost-cutting.
GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian sent an email to employees Monday alerting them that it was planning to fire more staff while encouraging some other longtime employees to leave. The agency also plans to close field offices even as it requires workers to come back to the office.
“This serves as notice that the agency will be conducting a reduction in force (RIF) and is seeking approval from Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to also obtain a Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA),” read the email, obtained and first reported by Federal News Network. “More information to impacted business units and employees will be forthcoming.”
The warning is the latest broadside against the federal bureaucracy from President Donald Trump’s new administration that is being led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his Department of Government Efficiency.
Executives at the GSA told staff earlier this month that it plans to cut its own budget in half. Employees were told to expect the closure of many GSA-managed buildings and a steep reduction in staff, while the remaining workers would be subject to new surveillance measures, NPR reported.
Separately, Ehikian said the GSA was also ending any remote work for its workforce of roughly 13,000 people effective March 3, according to FNN. In the notice, Ehikian pledged to look for field offices for employees who live more than 50 miles away from a regional office, but he signaled that was a temporary solution while the government continues to cut its office footprint.
“There is a very high probability that if you are in this situation on March 3, this assigned duty station will likely change (to a duty station further away) once we align with our optimal regional footprint or determine productive co-working space with other GSA employees.”
The GSA’s budget for this fiscal year was $61B. It has 11 regional offices that Ehkian has said he is looking to consolidate and more than 700 field offices around the country. He told employees that a new commission is evaluating the GSA footprint to reduce waste and improve utilization.
In the email promising more layoffs, Ehikian told workers that the deferred resignation program offered in the early days of the Trump administration — which the government says some 75,000 employees accepted — was just the “first step in streamlining the federal workforce.”
DOGE has canceled at least 100 federal leases since Musk began taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy, according to the nongovernmental agency that posts its “Wall of Receipts” online.
The leases totaled 2.3M SF across the country, and DOGE said their termination would save the federal government roughly $145M.
The GSA has roughly 7,500 leases around the U.S. totaling around 150M SF. Drastic shifts in leasing policy would not just reverberate across Washington, D.C. — where real estate industry professionals are anxiously awaiting cuts to federal office footprints — but the broader sector.
Nearly 17% of REIT Office Properties Income Trust’s rental revenue comes from the federal government, while COPT Defense Properties relies on the government for 36% of its lease income.
OPI is already accounting for some likely lease exits in its financial reporting. On the firm’s earnings call this month, President Yael Duffy said that most of its space leased to the government was required to keep the agencies operating, but he conceded that it was hard to anticipate the Trump administration’s next move.
“The essential nature of the work these agencies do and their need to physically occupy our properties has historically provided OPI with stable cash flows, although the Department of Government Efficiency efforts are broad-based and unpredictable,” he said.
