Hiring impossible: FDA fallout

This week I’ve been reading about the FDA’s hiring struggles. For context, last year, as a result of cuts led by DOGE, the FDA laid off nearly 1,900 staff and another 1,200 staff took early retirement packages – combined, that’s roughly one-sixth of its workforce. The lay-offs seemed to have reversed last October, when the agency started rehiring. That rehiring process, according to STAT, is still ongoing and is bottlenecked, partly because the FDA’s HR teams also lost staff and because DOGE consolidated multiple administrative teams into one office that's understaffed.

It’s worrying because greater staffing levels at the FDA allow drugs to be reviewed more quickly, as well as inspections of facilities, investigations of safety problems, and allows staff to work more proactively on new initiatives, while shortages force them to focus on essential tasks. There’s also been pushback over whether the cuts could jeopardize the FDA’s targets under PDUFA, under which it's committed to review applications within set targets.