The National Weather Service has received permission to hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists and radar technicians just months after being hit hard by Department of Government Efficiency-related cuts and early retirement incentives.
The new hiring number includes 126 new positions that were previously approved and will apply to “front-line mission critical” personnel, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official told CNN.
The NWS cuts have spurred concerns over how well-prepared the country is to withstand hurricane season, which is just starting to heat up in the Atlantic. The staff reductions also have been scrutinized in the wake of the deadly Texas floods in July, with vacancies at weather service forecast offices there.
The cuts to probationary employees, as well as early retirement incentives, meant the nation’s front-line weather forecasting agency’s staffing levels fell by more than 550 people since the second Trump administration began, to below 4,000 total employees.
CNN has reached out to NOAA for comment.
Agency employees are greeting the news, unveiled at an all hands meeting on Monday, with guarded optimism and relief. Current employees have been working additional hours with additional responsibilities since the layoffs and retirements earlier this year, trying to maintain the 24/7 posture US extreme weather requires. The agency has also been functioning with less data from fewer, less frequent weather balloon launches.
fire 550 experienced employees, hire 450 new grads after expensive lawsuits
doesn’t seem very, uh, efficient to me
“How much time/money is it going to cost to train a bunch of new people when we had already-trained people in place?” asked another NOAA official, who requested anonymity
Yes, but now they can hire only Trump supporters to make sure the “science” meets the White House’s ideological standards.
“They’re not rehiring their best people…”
Meet the new head of the NWS: Jack “Large Nuts” McGill.
“In fact, severely-reduced pay all around!”
“Yey!”
It’s efficient when the actual intent is to replace everyone with sycophants.
And incompetents. Graduates of Bastyr College’s School of Holistic Meteorology, Zodiac Climate Science, and Organic Astrology.
Ah, the famed efficiency of business and capitalism.
/s
Remember when Elon Musk was saving so much money?
I do not
No one does
If they’re all GS positions, the hiring process will take forever and has the lovely new trump loyalty bullshit baked in as a shit cherry on top.
Yeah, thats the part the news outlets seem to forget. The hiring paradigms this time around favor cronyism and nepotism over actual merit and skill, and direct hire just augments that 10 fold
Its not that it favors it; its literally an essay question as part of the application process now.
"How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” asks one of four essay questions that job seekers must answer if they are seeking any federal position GS-5 or above. “Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”
It’s not just the essay questions or the loyalty tests. Whether or not you are hired, and whether or not you get to keep your job is wholesale based on if a Trump Admin stooge thinks you pass the admins vibe check.
And, if you don’t pass the vibe check for your probation you get an adverse action on your personnel file which basically precludes you from working in the civil service again. (Page 7)
It’s shit all the way down ngl, and the civil service will take decades to recover from all this.
It’s the fucking weather service. They can’t advance any of his fucking orders. All they can do is follow them, as dumb as they are.
They can say the weather is caused by sunspots or windmills or Mexicans or Jewish space lasers or some dumb shit
Surely they could…lie?
“How did you vote in the last election?”
As 2/3 of Americans effectively voted for Trump, it seems that they must be quite pleased with the result.
2/3 of Americans effectively voted for Trump
Effectively is doing some serious lifting there. But non-voters deserve it.
Of 264.8 million voting age Americans only 77.3 million Trump voters - so less than a 3rd of eligible voters voted for him.
If you didn’t vote you effectively voted for the winner as it is only by voting that you can say that you didn’t vote for him.
Next year they’ll fire over half of them again just to show costs are being cut. And perhaps someone will yell “we hired them back to improve the climate, look what it got us”.
Time to nogotiate good salaries. They must be desparate.
That’s not really a thing with federal jobs. They all have pay caps, and the top cap for the highest GS role is something like 191k. Sounds like a lot, but it’s well below what industry will pay for similar high-level experience and skills.
thats pretty much reason why people dont go for govt jobs, shit pay. im betting meteorologists, at a channel station pays more.
And for HCOL areas, it’s not a lot at all. More than enough to pay bills, sure, but you’re not buying even one yacht on that.
No they probably only hire climate change deniers
That might be a real issue, yes.
Interviewer: Can you tell me what we do here exactly?
