Federal agency plans to move workers to Kansas City. How many jobs still unclear

As President Donald Trump’s administration shakes up the federal workforce, some employees in one department will be moving to Kansas City.

Brooke Rollins, secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, announced this week that a reorganization of the department will include relocating staff out of the Washington, D.C. area and into five hub locations: Kansas City; Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

The USDA deals with livestock and agriculture, food safety, managing national forests and addressing hunger. In a video message, Rollins said the move would ensure that the department is located closer to the people it serves while providing a more affordable cost of living for employees and their families.

Meanwhile, the department will vacate office spaces around Washington that it says have a backlog of expensive maintenance needs and are underutilized. The five new locations were selected based on cost of living and existing concentration of employees.

“American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers and producers we are mandated to support. President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country,” Rollins said in a statement.

The USDA currently has 4,600 employees in the Washington, D.C. region, which will go down to no more than 2,000. The exact number of positions that will be moved to Kansas City was not immediately clear, and more information will become available about relocations in the coming months.

It’s not the first time the USDA announced employees would move to Kansas City: During President Donald Trump’s first administration, the department announced plans in 2019 to relocate two research agencies and hundreds of jobs to the region. The plan included local incentives.

But fewer than half of the employees offered transfers then agreed to move. By spring 2021, roughly 200 jobs remained vacant, The Star reported at the time.

A 2023 Government Accountability report found that while the two agencies’ staffing and productivity eventually recovered, their work suffered in the meantime, and the workforce became less experienced and less diverse.

This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 1:57 PM.