The Social Security Administration is making sweeping moves to reduce its workforce and workspace as President Donald Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, slash the federal government.

The agency said in a press release Monday that it will terminate contracts and grants, freeze hiring and cancel office leases, claiming that would amount to $800 million savings.

It wasn’t clear how the cuts would impact the Woodlawn-based Social Security headquarters or the roughly two dozen offices in Maryland. About 10,000 people worked for Social Security in Maryland as of last year, according to federal data.

Leland Dudek, acting commissioner of Social Security, said in a statement that the Social Security Administration had been operating on “autopilot” by spending “billions annually doing the same things the same way leading to bureaucratic stagnation, inefficiency, and a lack of meaningful service improvements.”

The Monday announcement follows a warning the agency issued to workers Friday that it “would soon implement an agency-wide restructuring,” reducing head count from 57,000 employees to 50,000.

Dudek said in a Friday press release that reports of a 50% workforce reduction were false.

The agency will push for reductions through retirements, buyouts and resignations, as well as by abolishing organizations and positions. Officials said some workers could be reassigned within the agency to customer service roles.

Employees electing to voluntarily leave the agency have until March 14 to opt in and must separate by April 19, according to a Thursday press release. Union officials have asked employees to await further guidance before pursuing voluntary separation.

Under the agency’s restructuring, regional offices will shrink in number from 10 to four, and the number of deputy commissioners will decrease from nine to seven, the agency said. Social Security lost two deputy commissioners last week when Dudek shuttered the agency’s Office of Transformation and Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity.

“These steps prioritize customer service by streamlining redundant layers of management, reducing non-mission critical work and potential reassignment of employees to customer service positions,” the press release says.

The Social Security Administration is among federal agencies revising its government credit card policy. DOGE previously touted deactivating some 24,000 cards across the federal government on the Musk-owned social media platform X.

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