Carson Swick
The Baltimore Sun (TNS)
The Social Security Administration has been instructed to reduce its staff by half as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to pursue widespread cuts across the federal government, according to multiple media reports.
Headquartered in Woodlawn, Maryland, the Social Security Administration is one of the locally based federal agencies that employs Maryland’s large federal workforce. The state is home to more than 160,000 federal workers.
The SSA has been among the sites where protests have been held during the first month of Trump’s second term, as Maryland lawmakers, federal workers and their supporters have called for saving government jobs.
Some SSA staffers anonymously told The Washington Post Wednesday that the agency was directed to “swiftly produce plans” for staffing cuts. The General Services Administration says terminations at the SSA are “imminent,” according to an X/Twitter post from Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein.
According to sources cited by The American Prospect, acting SSA commissioner Lee Dudek requested Tuesday that managers present him with a plan to reduce the staff’s 57,000 employees by Thursday afternoon. The cuts could impact more than 1,200 Social Security field offices across the country, the outlet reported.
Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk has framed the cuts as necessary and consistent with his department’s efforts to curb wasteful spending while insisting that the Trump administration is only targeting non-essential employees.
“We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well,” Musk said during the Trump cabinet’s first meeting on Wednesday. “But if the job is not essential or they’re not doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the public payroll.”
The SSA closed both its Office of Transformation and Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity earlier this week, leading to about 190 workers being put on administrative leave. Dudek — who assumed leadership of the agency upon the resignation of previous leader Michelle King over DOGE access concerns — has publicly railed against these offices as “wasteful” and “duplicitous,” respectively.
An anonymous comment on a Blogspot post announcing the latter office’s abolition suggested Trump could be reneging on his campaign promise to “not touch” Social Security benefits.
“‘Not touching Social Security’ is not the reality of this administration,” the comment read. “Looking for government to fail and be replaced by private industry appears to be the goal.”
The SSA maintains a total staff of about 57,000 federal workers, plus 12,000 SSA personnel who are technically state employees. About 120,000 people visit SSA field offices around the country each day, as these offices allow eligible individuals to sign up for Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as apply for disability or survivor benefits.
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©2025 The Baltimore Sun. Visit at baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Tags: doge, Social Security, trump
