Layoffs cascaded through the federal government on Thursday after its human resources division advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 workers on probation, a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s drive to overhaul and shrink the federal work force.
Among the largest layoffs reported on Thursday was one announced by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which dismissed more than 1,000 employees, including probationary workers who had worked at the agency for less than two years. Employees at several other agencies also reported receiving termination notices, though the full extent of the cuts in many departments was not immediately clear.
Regardless, the layoffs could mark a major increase in the scale of the Trump administration’s efforts to shed federal workers and reshape government. The administration had already said that about 75,000 workers had accepted an offer to resign in exchange for being paid through September, but the removal of most workers on probation, generally recent hires who have been in their roles less than a year, could cut much deeper into the federal government’s civilian work force of 2.3 million.
The cuts even extended to the agency ordering them, the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal civilian work force. It laid off dozens of employees on Thursday, according to people familiar with the move.
The dismissals came on the same day that leaders at O.P.M. met with agency representatives and urged them to lay off most probationary employees, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak about the issue publicly.
Many employees on fixed-term assignments at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were also terminated on Thursday, according to several people familiar with the matter. The dismissals came after more than 70 probationary workers at the bureau were laid off earlier this week.
Workers on probation do not receive the same protections that many other federal employees have. Probationary periods tend to last a year, but they can be longer for certain positions. According to the most recent data as of May, the federal government employed roughly 220,000 employees who were serving in their roles for less than a year.
A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management said the probationary period was “not an entitlement for permanent employment,” and that agencies were taking independent action in support of President Trump’s broader efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.
The terminations were swiftly condemned by union leaders representing federal workers.
“These firings are not about poor performance — there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants,” Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement. “They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
The exact number of workers who were fired at the Office of Personnel Management was unclear, but three people at the agency familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that those affected included probationary employees who had worked there for less than two years, members of the agency’s communications office and Schedule A workers — individuals, including veterans, with severe physical, psychiatric or intellectual disabilities.
The affected O.P.M. employees were locked out of their computer systems and asked to leave the building less than an hour after they were informed of the layoffs in a group call, according to audio of the call, which was shared with The New York Times. An email to staff, also shared with The Times, said that the agency’s communications office was being dissolved as part of wider cuts at the Office of Personnel Management.
The firings came a day after the Trump administration moved forward with a deferred resignation program for federal workers, which encouraged employees to resign in exchange for being paid through September, though Congress has not approved funding for it yet. The incentive program has closed to new entries after a judge allowed it to proceed.
Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs said that workers who accepted the resignation offer were exempt from the terminations on Thursday. There are currently more than 43,000 probationary employees across the department, and the vast majority were exempt from the terminations because they serve in “mission-critical positions” or are covered under a collective bargaining agreement, according to department officials.
The dismissals came after other agencies had already moved to lay off workers in recent days. On Wednesday, the General Services Administration — which manages the federal real estate portfolio and much of the government’s tech work force — told dozens of employees across its technology division that they were losing their jobs. On the same day, at least 60 probationary employees at the Education Department were laid off, according to officials at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union.
Dozens of probationary employees at the Small Business Administration were also told on Tuesday that they would be terminated, officials at A.F.G.E. said.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing agencies to start initiating plans for “large scale” reductions in staffing. The order gave Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency substantial power to reshape the federal work force and approve which career officials are hired in the future.
The Trump administration has also collected information from agencies like the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and others about their new hires, raising the specter of more mass firings in coming weeks. More than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees who had been hired in the last year and still had probationary status were warned last week that they could be fired at any time.
Kate Conger, Stacy Cowley and Matthew Goldstein contributed reporting.
