The National Weather Service has received permission to hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists and radar technicians just months after being hit hard by Department of Government Efficiency-related cuts and early retirement incentives.
The new hiring number includes 126 new positions that were previously approved and will apply to “front-line mission critical” personnel, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official told CNN.
The NWS cuts have spurred concerns over how well-prepared the country is to withstand hurricane season, which is just starting to heat up in the Atlantic. The staff reductions also have been scrutinized in the wake of the deadly Texas floods in July, with vacancies at weather service forecast offices there.
The cuts to probationary employees, as well as early retirement incentives, meant the nation’s front-line weather forecasting agency’s staffing levels fell by more than 550 people since the second Trump administration began, to below 4,000 total employees.
CNN has reached out to NOAA for comment.
Agency employees are greeting the news, unveiled at an all hands meeting on Monday, with guarded optimism and relief. Current employees have been working additional hours with additional responsibilities since the layoffs and retirements earlier this year, trying to maintain the 24/7 posture US extreme weather requires. The agency has also been functioning with less data from fewer, less frequent weather balloon launches.
fire 550 experienced employees, hire 450 new grads after expensive lawsuits
doesn’t seem very, uh, efficient to me
“How much time/money is it going to cost to train a bunch of new people when we had already-trained people in place?” asked another NOAA official, who requested anonymity
“In fact, severely-reduced pay all around!”
“Yey!”
Yes, but now they can hire only Trump supporters to make sure the “science” meets the White House’s ideological standards.
Meet the new head of the NWS: Jack “Large Nuts” McGill.
“They’re not rehiring their best people…”
It’s efficient when the actual intent is to replace everyone with sycophants.
And incompetents. Graduates of Bastyr College’s School of Holistic Meteorology, Zodiac Climate Science, and Organic Astrology.
If they’re all GS positions, the hiring process will take forever and has the lovely new trump loyalty bullshit baked in as a shit cherry on top.
“How did you vote in the last election?”
Next year they’ll fire over half of them again just to show costs are being cut. And perhaps someone will yell “we hired them back to improve the climate, look what it got us”.
Time to nogotiate good salaries. They must be desparate.
That’s not really a thing with federal jobs. They all have pay caps, and the top cap for the highest GS role is something like 191k. Sounds like a lot, but it’s well below what industry will pay for similar high-level experience and skills.
Interviewer: Can you tell me what we do here exactly?
