SBA to Reduce Workforce by 43% and Focus on ‘Core Missions’

The Small Business Administration (SBA) said Friday (March 21) that it will reduce its workforce by 43% and refocus its resources on its “core missions.”

The agency will eliminate about 2,700 of its current 6,500 positions, it said in a Friday press release. It will do so through voluntary resignations, the expiration of term appointments and reductions in force.

These cuts will return the SBA to the staffing levels it had before the pandemic, during the first term of President Donald Trump, according to the release.

“Just like the small business owners we support, we must do more with less,” SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said in the release. “We have therefore submitted plans to pursue a strategic restructuring that will realign the agency and its resources with our founding mission.”

Loeffler said that with these changes, the SBA will refocus on its core missions of small business promotion, loan guarantee and disaster assistance programs, and field and veteran operations.

She added that the SBA will ensure 30% of the agency is in the field to better serve Main Streets across the country, will preserve existing staffing levels in its units that promote veteran businesses and American manufacturing, and will exempt key accountability offices from reductions at this time.

“The SBA was created to be a launchpad for America’s small businesses by offering access to capital, which in turn drives job creation, innovation and a thriving Main Street,” Loeffler said in the release. “But in the last four years, the agency has veered off track — doubling in size and turning into a sprawling leviathan plagued by mission creep, financial mismanagement and waste.”

It was reported in February that the SBA was among the agencies at which recently hired workers still on probation were being laid off under the White House’s plan to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

The agency’s Friday press release said the newly announced reductions are being made pursuant to Trump’s Feb. 11 executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) workforce optimization initiative.

“By eliminating waste, bloat and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers and our system of Government itself,” Trump wrote in the order.

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