FEMA’s staffing shortages have hindered past disaster recovery efforts, GAO says. Now the agency has even fewer workers

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s past recovery efforts have been impeded by staffing shortages, and officials are facing an ongoing hurricane season with even fewer employees, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday. 

“Given continued demands on the federal response workforce and recent staff reductions, the federal government will likely need to meet its disaster response mission with fewer available resources this year,” investigators wrote. “Should the U.S. experience a similarly catastrophic peak hurricane season in September and October 2025, as it did in 2024, meeting response needs could be a major challenge.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted “above-normal” hurricane activity this hurricane season, which runs June 1 through Nov. 30. 

GAO reported that the number of active FEMA employees decreased from about 25,800 to 23,350, or 9.5%, between Jan. 1 and June 1. Of the roughly 2,450 departures, 1,465 were due to the workers participating in a voluntary separation program. 

Additionally, the watchdog found that 24 members of FEMA’s Senior Executive Service left between Jan. 25 and June 1 — 20 due to a separation program. In comparison, the agency reported an average of 13 SES departures annually during the three previous fiscal years. 

As of mid-June 2025, FEMA’s SES cadre was only half filled. 

“Agency communications indicate the senior leaders who departed in recent months generally had experience managing complicated disasters,” investigators wrote. “For example, one had been deployed to over 210 events and was described as one of the most experienced field leaders in the nation. Another had managed over 100 disaster and emergency declarations and $9.4 billion in disaster obligations.”

FEMA’s staffing challenges are not new. Investigators reported that the agency began the 2024 hurricane season with only 17% of its incident management workforce (main disaster field support) available, which was a four-year low. This was mostly because staffers were already working on more than 80 major disaster and emergency declarations across the U.S. 

The agency began the 2025 hurricane season with an even lower percentage of field employees available to be deployed — just 12%. 

FEMA officials told investigators that when new disasters strike they often have to reassign workers. For example, 75% of Region 3 (Mid-Atlantic) employees were moved to Virginia in response to Hurricane Helene, taking staff away from ongoing recovery efforts elsewhere.  

Officials also said that due to these staffing shortages they’ve had to send grant management employees with little training to perform roles helping disaster survivors apply for assistance. In December 2024, there was an application backlog of about 500,000 for such assistance. 

In response to the training issue, FEMA is “re-emphasizing” a policy under which nearly all agency workers are assigned to and trained for an incident management or incident support role. 

President Donald Trump has targeted FEMA for reform, arguing that states would more effectively manage disaster response. 

Members of the FEMA Review Council established within the Homeland Security Department have warned that states should expect to shoulder more of the financial burden for disaster recovery in the future. 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a June Oval Office briefing that the department is pushing for states to help each other more with respect to disasters. 

FEMA reform is not limited to the executive branch. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday approved, 57-3, the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act (H.R. 4669). The bipartisan bill would, according to its supporters, “streamline” federal disaster response, make FEMA a cabinet-level agency and “reward effective state and local preparedness.” 

But GAO emphasized that these proposed overhauls are still hypothetical. 

“No concrete changes to disaster response roles have yet been made,” investigators wrote. “FEMA and other federal agencies spreading a reduced number of staff across the same or higher number of disasters nationwide could reduce effectiveness of federal disaster response for upcoming disasters.” 

DHS did not respond to a request for comment about GAO’s report.