Maryland’s state government workforce is shrinking by 502 positions, as workers take buyouts and vacant positions are eliminated.

It’s all part of cost-saving measures taken by Gov. Wes Moore and his administration — saving $27.4 million in the current budget year and $47.2 million annually in future years.

Moore administration officials never set any goals for how many employees they hoped would leave or how much money could be saved.

They insisted that the departures won’t affect the delivery of government programs or the quality of customer service.

“Our State agencies approached reductions in a manner that ensures the integrity of their mission and core priorities. … We are confident in our agencies’ thoughtful and thorough approach to ensuring both cost efficiency and capacity to fully support the citizens we serve,” Helene Grady, the state budget secretary, wrote in a statement.

The buyouts and elimination of vacant positions are part of cost-saving measures that Moore announced in June, along with a partial hiring freeze. The Democratic governor was facing a directive from lawmakers in the state budget to find more than $100 million in personnel savings and eliminate 150.5 vacant positions or new positions that hadn’t yet been filled.

The buyout program — officially called “voluntary separation program” in government lingo — offered state employees a lump-sum payment of $20,000 plus $300 for each year of service to quit their jobs.

Patrick Moran, head of the largest union of state employees, said in a statement that decisions to eliminate jobs “must contend with the State’s ongoing issues with chronic understaffing, dangerous working conditions, and unsustainable workloads across key agencies.”

The state also needs to consider eliminating costly contracts and bringing more state functions in-house, addressing inefficiencies and closing tax loopholes that benefit corporations, said Moran, president of AFSCME Maryland.

Not everyone who applied for a buyout was allowed to quit. A total of 877 workers statewide submitted applications, and only 332, or 38%, were accepted.

In the Department of Labor, for example, 16 of 36 buyout applications were accepted. Another 15.7 vacant positions are being abolished.

Jennifer Esparza, the labor department’s chief of staff, said top officials did an evaluation of program staffing needs before employee buyout requests began rolling in.

“Wherever we could, we did our best to say, ‘We need this amount of folks to support this effort. So we can only afford to move the needle so much for this task,’” Esparza said.

Department of Labor programs related to workplace safety, financial regulation, unemployment insurance and workforce development were deemed critical functions where they could not afford to lose too many people.

The Maryland Department of the Environment, likewise, marked several programs as off the table for losing more employees, including pollution permit enforcement and emergency response.

“Enforcement was a really important area that we needed to make sure that Marylanders continued to receive the protection they deserve,” said Suzanne Dorsey, deputy environment secretary.

MDE is losing 13 employees of 25 who applied for a buyout, plus 17 vacant positions are being abolished.

Several state agencies accepted 100% of those who applied for buyouts, including: 10 in the Military Department; six at the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission and one each in the Maryland Cannabis Administration, Maryland Energy Administration and the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems.

The department losing the largest number of workers through buyouts is the Department of Human Services, where 65 employees were granted buyouts out of 214 who applied. DHS remains one of the state’s largest departments, with nearly 6,000 employees.

The directive to cut personnel costs was inserted into the state budget in the spring, when the state’s financial picture was more precarious than it is now. At the time, the governor and top Democratic lawmakers closed a more than $3 billion budget gap with a combination of increased taxes and fees as well as spending cuts.

Since then, despite uncertain news from Washington, state finances seem to have stabilized. The latest financial forecast issued last week included a slight decrease for revenue expected to come into state coffers for the current budget year, followed by a modest increase predicted for the next budget year.