Federal Emergency Management Agency supervisors are advising their staff to prepare for the elimination of 1,000 jobs this month as part of changes that Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is overseeing at the agency, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
The dismissals would apply to contractual FEMA staff whose assignments, which typically last for two or four years, expire this month. The workers, known as FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees, or CORE, help facilitate disaster recovery and emergency preparedness in communities across the country and have historically made up nearly 40 percent of the agency’s work force.
Three FEMA employees, including senior officials and supervisors, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media, confirmed the dismissals.
A spokesman for FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dismissals are elevating fears among FEMA staff that more job cuts are on the way this year. A FEMA planning document obtained by The New York Times detailed potential cuts of more than 11,500 people from a work force of about 23,000. The existence of the document was first reported by The Washington Post.
Daniel Llargues, a FEMA spokesman, said the document was “a routine, pre-decisional work force planning exercise.” He said there was no “percentage-based work force reduction plan.”
The FEMA employees who spoke with The Times expressed concern that Ms. Noem appears to be deeply involved in work force changes at FEMA. Federal law enacted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 bars the homeland security secretary from “significantly” reducing FEMA’s ability to perform its mission of preparing for, responding to and leading recovery from disasters.
Emails sent to senior FEMA officials in recent weeks, and reviewed by The Times, show that as of the end of 2025, agency officials could no longer renew CORE workers’ employment without Ms. Noem’s approval. A form, reviewed by The Times, that is required to be attached to any requests to renew CORE employment includes a space for a signature from the office of the homeland security secretary.
The CORE roles are “term-limited positions that are designed to fluctuate based on disaster activity, operational need, and available funding,” Mr. Llargues said.
The 2025 hurricane season in the United States was relatively quiet, with no tropical cyclones or storms making landfall. Still, recovery from disasters like the Los Angeles fires last January and Hurricane Helene in 2024 continues to require federal resources, which are moving more slowly to communities or being denied altogether.
Critics of the Trump administration’s approach to disaster response said further cuts to FEMA staffing would put Americans at risk.
“You cannot gut the agency responsible for disaster response and expect it to function at its best when the next hurricane, wildfire or flood hits,” said Rafael Lemaitre, a former FEMA official now serving on the advisory council of an advocacy group called Sabotaging Our Safety.
FEMA’s staffing dropped significantly through firings and early retirements in the first year of this Trump administration. Briefings on FEMA operations across the country issued each day show the agency’s work force is more than 20 percent smaller than it was a year ago, down to 23,000 employees from nearly 29,000.
CORE employees, who made up 39 percent of the FEMA work force as of 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office, help the agency remain nimble and adapt to changing needs associated with disaster relief and long-term disaster recovery, said Ernest Abbott, a professorial lecturer in law at George Washington University who served as FEMA’s general counsel under President Bill Clinton. They allow the agency to hire employees and move them around without being bound to traditional civil service rules, he said.
“The whole point was to have an agency that had flexibility and could ramp up and down with events,” Mr. Abbott said.
President Trump and Ms. Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, have said they want to shift more of the responsibility and cost of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to states.
But while members of both parties agree FEMA is in need of overhaul to better help communities, many Republicans don’t agree that staffing cuts would help accomplish that. A draft spending bill released by the Republican-controlled Senate last month includes provisions that would bar FEMA from cutting staff needed for key functions, including delivery and review of disaster aid.
Dominik Lett, a policy analyst with the right-leaning Cato Institute, said that while job cuts could make FEMA leaner, they wouldn’t necessarily reduce states’ reliance on the agency, or the flow of billions of dollars of disaster aid.
But with fewer workers, FEMA could be slow to aid communities, said Michael Coen Jr., a FEMA chief of staff under the Biden and Obama administrations. Any deficiencies may not be exposed until it’s too late, he said.
“Maybe it will take a disaster,” Mr. Coen said. “That might be the tipping point when more people speak up.”
Maxine Joselow contributed reporting.
Scott Dance is a Times reporter who covers how climate change and extreme weather are transforming society.
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