A pause, a freeze, a ban, a cancellation
Trump’s return to the White House is already having a big impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings including grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.
The moves have generated extensive confusion and uncertainty at the nation’s largest research agency, which has become a target for Trump’s political allies. “The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating,” one senior NIH employee says.
Well, it’s only health. This would be bad if it were about something important, but health doesn’t matter.
The hiring freeze is governmentwide, whereas a pause on communications and travel appears to be limited to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency. Such pauses are not unprecedented when a new administration comes in. But some NIH staff suggested these measures, which include pulling job ads and rescinding offers, are more extreme than any previously.
I suppose we can see the thinking. It’s health and human services. What good is that to Trump? How does it make him richer? Plus also, Fauci.
Hiring is also affected. No staff vacancies can be filled; in fact, before Trump’s first day in office was over, NIH’s Office of Human Resources had rescinded existing job offers to anyone whose start date was slated for 8 February or later. It also pulled down currently posted job vacancies on USA Jobs. “Please note, these tasks had to be completed in under 90 minutes and we were unable to notify you in advance,” the 21 January email noted, asking NIH’s institutes and centers to pull down any job vacancies remaining on their own websites.
The various directives have shaken the vast community of extramural scientists NIH supports. “[We] have not seen anything concrete from NIH yet,” said one scientist at a major academic medical center. “But just like about everyone in science, we are worried and waiting.”
Listen, these health people are dangerous. You gotta use caution.
H/t What a Maroon
Meanwhile in Canada, virtually all of the new jobs created in the country over the last couple years have been government positions at all three levels: federal, provincial, and municipal. The only thing keeping Canada’s economy afloat is government jobs.
With massive disruption in the labor force caused by AI and automation, now is a strange time to be deliberately slashing jobs that could be upheld. Most countries are beginning to talk about Universal Basic Income, which the Canadian government’s massive hiring spree is just a disguised form of — they’re handing out incomes to as many people they can, only with job titles attached.
Musk keeps vacillating between saying that soon there won’t be enough jobs for all the people, and soon there won’t be enough people for all the jobs. Canada came down on the side of “there won’t be enough jobs for all the people so let’s slash immigration and create as many government jobs as possible to keep the people afloat while we figure out a plan”. The US is slashing immigration but it’s also slashing the job force at the same time, which seems highly risky to me. There’s no guarantee that the private sector will make up all the jobs that get cut out of the public sector. Especially if they’re simultaneously pushing to automate everything with A.I.
This is capitalism: there is no guarantee of anything except that the rich get richer.
It has been my experience that government hiring freezes are never comprehensive; they can find ways to hire, but usually not the people at the bottom.
For instance, a college I know had a hiring freeze because of the legislature. They couldn’t hire professors, secretaries, or anything else. But…they hired seventeen administrators, all of them making substantially more than a professor. (Mind you, this was in Texas; but my experience suggests it’s not unique to Texas).