A year after DOGE cuts, GSA now plans to hire hundreds of employees

A year later Elon Musk’s so called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effectively fired thousands civil servantsone federal agency affected by these cuts is now preparing to hire hundreds of people.

The General Services Administration (GSA), an agency that oversees the government’s IT department and real estate interests, is hiring “approximately 400 positions” across its Public Building Service (PBS) division, according to an email obtained by WIRED.

“We are pleased to announce that the GSA Strategic Hiring Committee has approved the PBS staffing plan designed to meet our workforce needs and strengthen our teams,” reads an email sent to employees Monday by PBS Chief of Staff Donna Dix.

The email goes on to say that the hiring effort will focus on “the most important areas of need: facilities management, procurement and project management.”

GSA did not respond to a request for comment.

PBS, which manages the federal buildings under GSA’s banner, lost hundreds of employees in March 2025 following DOGE cuts. The agency, WIRED reports At the time, he was also tasked with selling more than 500 government buildings, some of which housed government agencies and the offices of US senators. One of the properties on the list was a sensitive housing complex CIA facility in Northern Virginia. Since then, the agency has backed off measure of these plans, instead doubling down on helping to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the US. WIRED reported in February that GSA and PBS are assisting ICE’s plans to lease offices across the US as part of a massive expansion drive.

This isn’t the first time PBS has had this plans announced to rehire or replace federal employees cut by DOGE. In September, hundreds of PBS employees were given the opportunity to return to work months after accepting a deferred resignation offer, effectively turning their half-year severance into an extended vacation.

Stephen Ehikian, the former acting head of the GSA, left the agency in September 2025 after conducting extensive layoffs. As of May last year, 2,100 workers have taken deferred resignation and another 1,000 have been laid off. “The opportunity we had was to restructure (GSA), reduce it, and now the team is in a phenomenal position to build it back the way they want,” he said. told Nextgov then. Ehikian’s wife previously worked for Elon Musk’s social media firm X.

Since leaving government, Ehikian has moved into the private sector, running enterprise AI firm C3 AI. The company announced significant cuts to its workforce earlier this year. His stock down 17 percent following the announcement.