Health Department: “Dismissal Notices Sent Due to Coding Error”… 600 Actually Laid Off,
[AP/Newsis] U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Headquarters on October 13, 2025.
[Seoul=Newsis] Reporter Kwon Sung-geun reports that amidst the ongoing U.S. federal government shutdown, the Trump administration issued mass layoff notices to CDC employees, only to revoke a significant number of them, according to CNN on the 12th (local time).
Citing the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), CNN reported that on the night of the 10th, around 1,300 CDC employees received layoff notices, but on the following day, the 11th, about 700 of them were informed that they were not actually being laid off.
A U.S. Health and Human Services Department official explained that a coding error in the mass-sent layoff notices resulted in incorrect notifications being sent.
However, about 600 employees were reportedly actually laid off.
Andrew Nixon, Communications Director of the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the CDC, stated that those who received the erroneous notifications were never laid off by the agency and were all informed that they were not part of the reduction.
Among the employees whose status was corrected and maintained were epidemiology specialists (EIS) who are the first to respond to outbreaks, the publishing team of the CDC’s flagship journal “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR),” the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the Global Health Center, and the Public Health Infrastructure Center, according to CNN.
Nirav Shah, former deputy director of the CDC, commented, “In the past, I might have considered this confusion as a result of management incompetence, but now I rather suspect the chaos might have been intentional.”
He noted, “Such layoffs mean wasting valuable days, weeks, or months in preparing for the next health crisis that we should have already been prepared for.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration began laying off federal employees starting on the 10th, as the shutdown entered its tenth day.