HOUSTON, United States

US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday that he expects about 20% of recently fired employees to get their jobs back, according to media reports.

Nearly 10,000 HHS workers were laid off in March as part of the Elon Musk-led effort to shrink the federal workforce, an effort critics say is being done recklessly and in violation of the law. Another 10,000 employees were expected to leave their positions through buyouts, with the aim of reducing the department's staff from 82,000 full-time workers to 62,000.

Reports emerged this week of vital positions being cut in areas such as food safety, Alzheimer’s disease research, and safety testing of medical devices.

"Some programs that were cut, they’re being reinstated," Kennedy told a news conference. "Personnel that should not have been cut were cut. We’re reinstating them."

The unofficial Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has moved quickly to slash federal spending across various government agencies, including HHS, by cutting thousands of jobs, but many departments are rehiring fired workers after finding that their roles were necessary, prompting court intervention for their reinstatement.

The seemingly unplanned process of firing and rehiring has left tens of thousands of federal workers anxious if their jobs are safe and unsure how to work after colleagues were dismissed without warning.

Kennedy said that a program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which monitored blood lead levels for children would be reinstated, according to The Wall Street Journal. He said that it was "always the plan" to fix mistakes made from cuts made by the team led by Musk, a billionaire and Trump’s largest campaign donor.

"Part of the DOGE ... is we’re going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes," said Kennedy.

Under the cuts, the 28 divisions of HHS were shrunk to 15 and 10 regional offices were reduced to five in a matter of weeks.

Neither Musk nor his team has a background in government service, and many of the cuts were made at a moment’s notice, over objections from longtime employees and supervisors. The cuts have also met a vociferous public backlash, with particular ire being directed at Musk.

Kennedy defended the restructuring when the cuts began in March, saying that it would save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year and "serve multiple goals without impacting critical services."

Both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been hit the hardest by the cuts, according to reports.