FEMA begins limited hiring campaign after wave of departures

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is looking to fill hundreds of open positions ahead of wildfire and hurricane season, the agency’s first hiring push after losing thousands of employees over the past year.

FEMA announced the hiring plans during an all-hands meeting with staff last week, according to two sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

During the call, senior leaders announced that a hiring freeze for FEMA had been lifted. They said the agency has approval from DHS leadership to make about 300 new hires in the near term.

Officials hope to fill up to 700 vacancies in the coming months, but the agency is still in conversations with DHS headquarters about a broader staffing plan, according to the sources.

During the meeting, Robert Fenton, Jr., the senior official performing the duties of the FEMA administrator, said his top priority is supporting the agency’s workforce, according to the sources.

Fenton’s day job is the administrator for FEMA Region 9. He began leading the agency on an interim basis earlier this month, as President Donald Trump’s new nominee for FEMA administrator, Cameron Hamilton, awaits confirmation in the Senate.

In an interview with CBS News published Wednesday, Fenton said FEMA was “aggressively hiring,” but he didn’t share the specific hiring numbers.

“FEMA is taking targeted steps to stabilize our workforce and strengthen readiness,” an agency spokesperson told Federal News Network. “With approval from the DHS Strategic Hiring Committee, FEMA is resuming hiring for priority positions and restarting recruitment for reservist and local hire roles. Under new leadership, FEMA is addressing outstanding personnel actions to ensure workforce stability and a strong, deployable force for upcoming national events and potential disasters. FEMA remains committed to operational readiness for all major challenges in 2026.”

FEMA began posting open positions on USAJobs this week. Openings include emergency management specialists, human resources specialists, and public affairs specialists at multiple locations.

The hiring push comes as Atlantic hurricane season officially starts June 1. Meanwhile, wildfire activity in the United States is already off to a historic start in 2026 and could get worse as wildfire potential increases during the summer months.

In addition to preparing for natural disasters, FEMA this year is also contributing to preparations for this summer’s FIFA World Cup and America 250 celebrations, respectively.

The lifting of the hiring freeze comes after FEMA earlier this month reinstated 14 employees who were suspended for signing a public letter criticizing emergency management policies under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

FEMA also offered reappointments to about 180 Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees (CORE) who were abruptly let go in January of this year. Those CORE cuts sparked broader concerns that Noem’s DHS was seeking to enact broad workforce cuts across FEMA.

New Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, confirmed by the Senate in March, has reversed many of Noem’s policies.

But FEMA’s current hiring goals would fall well short of replacing all the employees who have left under the Trump administration. The agency has lost approximately 5,000 staff since January 2025, according to a recent letter from House Democrats. Many employees took voluntary buyouts or early retirements as uncertainty swirled around the future of FEMA last year.

“That’s not going to be enough for the agency’s needs,” one FEMA employee who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the agency’s staffing situation told Federal News Network of the renewed hiring push. “The agency was already understaffed before Trump came to office.”

A second employee said FEMA is specifically focused on hiring people for its Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMATs), which are first on the scene of a disaster. The agency is also looking to fill open positions that support disaster operations at regional offices or at FEMA headquarters in Washington, DC, the source said.

In the interview with CBS News, Fenton said FEMA was in a better place than it was last year, when the agency started hurricane season with just 12% of its incident management force available, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“We have a little bit over 30% of our disaster workforce ready right now,” he said. “Between 30 and 40% is normal availability.”

Fenton also served on the Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council. That group recently issued its final report, which backed off on draft recommendations that would have urged steep staffing cuts at FEMA. But the council did recommend reviewing FEMA’s staffing needs after offloading some agency responsibilities to state and local governments.

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