President Trump's proposed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 includes substantial reductions to the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) budget and staff. The proposed discretionary budget is slashed from $13.5 billion to $9 billion, reducing it by one third. The number of employees is reduced by nearly 4,000 from 14,855 to 10,879—or a more than 25% cut.
The DOL budget proposes consolidating 11 workforce development programs into a single "Make America Skilled Again" grant program to provide funding directly to states and localities. It also would eliminate the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP), Job Corps, and the Women's Bureau. The budget justifies the elimination of the OFCCP based on the revocation of Executive Order 11246, which provided the basis for OFCCP requiring most affirmative action plans of federal contractors. The budget proposes transferring OFCCP's remaining enforcement obligations to the Veterans' Employment and Training Service and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The DOL budget also contains staffing cuts to various enforcement agencies. The Employee Benefits Security Administration, which oversees retirement, health, and other workplace benefits, faces a staffing reduction of 47. The budget proposes reducing the Wage and Hour Division's budget by $25,000,000 and headcount by over 400. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration would be reduced by over 220 employees with almost $50,000,000 cut from its budget. For more details on the proposed cuts see the DOL's FY 2026 Budget in Brief here.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) also reduced its budget request by $14 million from $299.2 million in FY 2025 to $285.2 million in FY 2026. The NLRB also plans on reducing staff by 99 employees through its participation in the Deferred Resignation Program and offers of voluntary early retirement. The most significant cuts are to the NLRB's Casehandling and Mission Support activities. Casehandling — encompassing unfair labor practice proceedings, representation proceedings, and compliance proceedings — will have a reduced headcount of 61 employees and budget reductions of $8.9 million. Mission Support, which includes administration, human resources, ethics, training, accounting, facilities, property, security, and technology infrastructure, will reduce its budget by $4.5 million and its headcount by 29 employees. For more details see the NLRB's FY 2026 Justification of Performance Budget for the Committee on Appropriations here.
Whether Congress or the courts can stymie President Trump's proposed cuts remains to be seen. President Trump previously reduced the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) from over 200 employees to around a dozen by executive order, but a federal judge granted a permanent injunction against it. The Ninth Circuit also recently refused to stay a district court's preliminary injunction against President Trump's mass federal worker layoffs. The district court that issued the preliminary injunction against the mass federal worker layoffs indicated recent proposed cuts at the State Department may also violate the injunction. The First Circuit also recently denied the government's request of a stay of a district court's preliminary injunction against layoffs at the Department of Education.
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