Trump Admin Backtracks on Laying Off NPS Workers – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
Following a loud public outcry about job cuts at the National Park Service — and a relentless media campaign from outdoors enthusiasts across the country — it looks like the Trump administration has reconsidered, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A plan to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers at the beloved federal agency appears to have been reversed.
Last month, prospective seasonal employees — the people who collect the entrance fees, clean the trails and restrooms and help rescue injured hikers — received emails saying their job offers for the 2025 season had been rescinded.
This week, a memo sent from the Department of Interior to park service officials said the agency could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year, up from the roughly 6,300 who have been hired in recent years.
If fully implemented, that would be a notable exception to the government-wide hiring freeze imposed when the Trump administration clamped down on the federal bureaucracy, threatening to eliminate entire agencies, offering “deferred resignation” to almost all federal workers and firing tens of thousands of career employees.
The memo addressed only temporary seasonal employees. It said nothing about the roughly 1,000 members of the National Park Service’s permanent workforce who were fired Friday (Feb. 14). They were included in the administration’s multiagency purge of tens of thousands of probationary federal employees, mostly people in the first couple of years of their careers who have fewer job protections than more seasoned employees.
Probationary employees represent about 5% of full-time staff at the park service.
