USDA expects fewer employees will refuse relocation as laid-off feds struggle to find jobs

The Agriculture Department is planning to move significantly more of its employees out of the D.C. metro area than it did under the first Trump administration. Its leaders expect this relocation to go smoother than the last one.

USDA announced last week that it will relocate more than half of its employees in the national capital region to five hubs across the country: Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Under the first Trump administration, USDA tried moving hundreds of employees at its two research bureaus to Kansas City. But more than half of the employees at the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture who received relocation notices left the agency rather than move to Kansas City.

USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden said he expects “more than a majority” of employees who receive relocation notices this time around will agree to move — in part because mass layoffs across the federal workforce are making the job search much more challenging in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

“I think many of them will choose to come, because given cuts made by other federal agencies here in Washington, D.C., the job market isn’t what it once was here,” Vaden on Wednesday told the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. “I think that the exciting opportunity these new hubs provide [is] for them to actually be able to own a home affordably and grow and expand their family with a lower cost of living.”

The USDA is also letting go of more than 15,000 employees from the agency later this year, after they accepted deferred resignation and early retirement offers.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told employees the agency is “not conducting a large-scale workforce reduction” of nonvoluntary layoffs. But in a memo, she wrote that “focused and limited reductions in force will be implemented only if needed.”

Vaden told lawmakers he doesn’t expect the upcoming relocations will lead to significantly more employees leaving the agency.

“We made a commitment that if employees go with us to these new locations, they’ve got a job, and we’re planning to have an office for them there. That’s what we’re planning for now. Whether every employee will voluntarily decide to come with us, I don’t know,” he said.

The department’s relocation plans are much broader in scope than what happened under the first Trump administration. But Vaden said USDA “learned some lessons” from the ERS-NIFA relocation effort in the first Trump administration.

“One of the most important lessons that we learned was, instead of looking all over the map, literally for where we should go if we’re looking to relocate, the first thing we should do is see where we already are and where we already have office space available and a core set of employees,” he said.

Vaden said the reorganization plan will allow USDA to recruit the next generation of its workforce, adding that the “prohibitive” cost of living in the D.C. makes it hard to keep employees.

“Government employees cannot afford to start a quality life in Washington, D.C., but they most certainly can in Indianapolis, Indiana,” Vaden said.

Trump promised to relocate as many as 100,000 federal employees out of D.C. during his reelection campaign, and relocate them “to places filled with patriots who love America.”

Other agencies, however, face a steep bill to relocate relatively few employees. The Office of Personnel Management, for example, expects to spend $42 million to relocate about 250 employees, spending about $166,000 to relocate each employee.

Vaden said USDA will cover relocation expenses for employees “within the bounds set by Congress.”

“The heart of USDA is in the field, and the maximum number of people possible should report to work there,” he said.

Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) said USDA employees are often the “most visible face of the federal government in rural America,” and that their presence in these communities “needs to be preserved and empowered.”

Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) dismissed the reorganization as a “half-baked plan” that USDA leadership released without consultation from Congress.

The USDA inspector general’s office found that the agency may have broken the law by not getting congressional approval before relocating NIFA and ERS employees to Kansas City.

The Government Accountability Office found that ERS and NIFA were less productive after the move to Kansas City, and took longer to produce economic forecasts and process grants.

“This means farmers didn’t get timely economic information, and researchers were left waiting for critical research funding. This reorganization plan would create similar chaos, but on a much grander scale,” Klobuchar said.

Vaden said criticism of the USDA reorganization is overblown. About 90% of USDA employees already work outside of the D.C. area. Vaden said about 2,200 USDA employees in the D.C. area left or retired from the agency under the Biden administration, but said there was no “outcry” from Congress about those departures.

“It is insulting to suggest that the more than 90% of USDA employees who clock in every day outside of Washington, D.C. are somehow less important than the people who do the same in Washington, D.C,” he said.

Vaden said lawmakers found out about USDA’s reorganization plans when the agency shared them with employees last week. USDA, he added, is gathering feedback from lawmakers following the release of the plan.

“The employees are the ones who are most directly affected by the Secretary’s decision. Out of common courtesy and respect, they should hear that decision from the secretary first, and not from a leak that originates from somewhere else,” he said.

Vaden said USDA still has broad authority to carry out its reorganization, based on legislation Congress passed more than 70 years ago.

Lawmakers in 1953 approved a reorganization plan from the Eisenhower administration, directing USDA “to place the administration of farm programs close to the state and local levels.”

“This is exactly what Congress intended,” Vaden told lawmakers.

USDA’s reorganization plan would close four D.C. area federal buildings and return them to the General Services Administration.

Even with all USDA employees returning to the office full-time, Vaden said the South Building located on the National Mall has yet to exceed 37% of its maximum occupancy.

Under the USE IT Act, agencies need to meet at least a 60% average occupancy standard for their offices. Agencies under the law must reduce or consolidate space if federal building utilization rates fall below 60%.

Vaden told lawmakers, “that’s not a high bar,” and that the department plans to offload buildings that don’t meet that standard.

“What drove our consideration was fairness to the taxpayer — asking them, can we really expect them to foot the bill for a building that is largely empty?” he said.

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