National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Brandon Williams said the agency plans to hire about 100 federal employees as it works to rebuild its workforce following prior staffing losses, telling lawmakers the effort will focus on targeted, high-quality hires.
“We are looking to hire about 100 new personnel…across our enterprise,” Williams said during a Senate Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee hearing on the agency’s budget Wednesday. “It’s the quality of the people we bring in [that] is really important, and that we do so in an efficient way.”
The hiring goal comes as the White House seeks a roughly 10% increase in funding for federal salaries and expenses at NNSA, aimed in part at supporting recruitment and retention across the nuclear security enterprise.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its Energy and Water subcommittee, framed the request against what she described as significant workforce losses in recent years. She said the agency had about 2,000 employees prior to the Donald Trump administration and was expanding, but later cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency led to the departure of hundreds of key staff.
“By the time you stopped the bleeding, we know that hundreds of key staff, actually the people who manage the nuclear stockpile, were gone,” Murray said, adding that NNSA is now working to undo that damage.
Murray also pressed Williams on the cost to taxpayers of rehiring personnel lost during those cuts, asking whether the agency had calculated the expense of recruiting and bringing staff back.
Williams said he did not have that information. “Honestly, Senator, that all happened before I was confirmed at the end of September,” he said. “I don’t have that information.”