Morale is at low ebb across the government and federal departments responsible for environmental safety and health after a tumultuous year of political maneuvering, according to a new survey by the non-profit Partnership for Public Service.

Only 20% of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, home to NIOSH, said they were satisfied with and engaged in their jobs in 2025. EPA scored slightly better, with 22.5% of employees satisfied and engaged. About one in three (36.4%) employees at the Department of Labor, home to OSHA, reported satisfaction and engagement. The survey of more than 11,000 employees across the federal government was conducted late last year by the PPS.

“The Trump administration is committing malpractice with its management of the federal workforce and the consequences will be an America that is less safe, less healthy and less prosperous,” said the partnership’s president, Max Stier.

Federal employees’ self-reported levels of satisfaction in their jobs and engagement in their work are dramatically lower in the new survey than the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. The findings of the PPS 2025 survey are not directly comparable to past FEVS results due to differences in methodology. A 2025 FEVS has not been conducted. An OPM official told Politico the survey is on pause and will resume later this year.

Culture-changing consequences

Without comparisons to past years, the PPS 2025 survey’s gloomy results are not surprising in the wake of the Trump administration’s culture-changing efforts to reshape the size and priorities of the government. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has radically reordered the agency’s priorities, repealing greenhouse gas emission standards and aiming to halt initiatives addressing global warming. The Department of Education is being dismantled by executive action. Justice Department offices are flooded with emergency immigration cases, struggling to keep up and sort through cases. The Department of Defense is now the Department of War. The State Department is contending with estranged allies and tariff blowback. And controversies cloud the Department of Health and Human Services, with sweeping overhauls of federal health agencies, challenges to scientific consensus on vaccines, and legally challenged policy shifts.

The low levels of job satisfaction, engagement, motivation (only 7.5% of employees said political leaders generate high levels of motivation) and trust (only 22.5% were confident they could report a suspected violation of a law, rule or regulation without experiencing retribution) are reported following 2025’s voluntary and mandatory departures, the virtual closure of major agencies and branch offices and former Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk’s demands that people justify their work product.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich was quoted in the Confined Space newsletter as saying:

“Almost every department and agency of the federal government has become a back-stabbing rat’s nest. Total pandemonium. Career staff against political appointees and vice versa, political appointees against other political appointees. Blatant misuses of taxpayer dollars, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, sexual predation, abuses of lower-level employees.”

Notably, the federal workforce remains committed to serving the public. Despite the turbulence of the past year, 95.4% of respondents said it was important to them that their work contributes to the public good.

The climate at OSHA and NIOSH

OSHA and NIOSH staff responses to the PPS survey were not broken out, but consider what these agencies have experienced in the past year:

At NIOSH:

• Last April, HHS informed staff of plans to terminate around 90% of NIOSH’s roughly 1,000 employees, eviscerating the agency.
• Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed a FY 2026 budget that would eliminate around 80% of NIOSH’s funding, including zeroing out its personal protective equipment certification program.
• Those moves were later reversed. About 1,000 layoff notices were revoked this past January. But about 20% of NIOSH's staff has been permanently lost to retirements and laid off employees finding other jobs, a NIOSH source told ISHN, speaking anonymously to protect their job. A major rebuilding job is now underway with significant research projects interrupted and uncertainty about NIOSH’s place in a proposed reorg creating the new Administration for a Healthy America. It’s not clear what NIOSH’s focus and funding will be, said the source.

At OSHA:

• Nearly 300 employees have left or lost their positions since the return of the Trump administration.
• In May 2025, DOGE announced it would close 11 OSHA offices. That number is now in flux as the administration has back tracked on closures and renewed a number of office leases.
• A federal government shutdown in October 2025 that lasted 43 days saw OSHA furlough 1,204 out of 1,664 staff members — roughly 75% of its workforce, including compliance officers. Regional office operations, rulemaking, cooperative programs, compliance assistance, informal conferences, settlement negotiations, VPP applications, and new programmed inspections were all suspended. 
• Internal data released in February 2026 showed a 20% decline in OSHA workplace inspections from April through September 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, and a 42% decrease in willful violation citations.
• The Department of Labor’s front office is in the throes of a major scandal. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer faces DOL investigations into complaints of personal misconduct, misuse of taxpayer funds, and allegations against her husband. Chavez-DeRemer's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff were forced to resign following an internal probe into the misconduct allegations. The secretary’s director of advance has been placed on leave pending internal reviews that she, the secretary and others in her office may have committed travel fraud by arranging official trips for the secretary to cover for personal excursions, according to a report in The New York Times. 

More than two dozen current and former department employees interviewed by the New York Times described the current Department of Labor as “a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides and a deeply demoralized staff.”

Staffers reportedly described the secretary as a "boss from hell" who demanded they run personal errands and perform menial tasks unrelated to their official duties.