President Donald Trump wants the Department of Labor (DOL) to do less. A lot less. According to Politico, in June, the Administration proposed eliminating the Women’s Bureau, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and Job Corps, while moving the Bureau of Labor Statistics into the Commerce Department. DOL would reduce its staffing to about 10,800, down more than one quarter from the nearly 14,800 staffers at the end of the Biden administration. Several agencies within the Department of Labor would lose from 10-38% of their funding, including the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, the Wage and Hour Division, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The one branch that would be unaffected by the cuts is the Office of Labor-Management Standards, which imposes reporting requirements on labor unions. Outside of DOL, both the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would also get less funding, but their cuts would be smaller. And at Health and Human Services, “The Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the collective labour rights of workers and brought anti-union billionaires into the heart of policymaking,” states the International Trade Union Confederation’s 2025 Global Rights Index.
