The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fired 76 employees as part of the Trump administration’s push to shrink the federal workforce.
Acting Comptroller Rodney Hood informed the staffers of their termination on Friday, according to an internal email obtained by American Banker.
In the email, Hood noted that the move was done to align the OCC with the administration’s “commitment to government efficiency” and in accordance with guidelines issued by the Office of Personnel Management. The terminations go into effect next month.
Like other federal employees fired during the past month, the 76 OCC workers were all within their probationary period, meaning they were relatively new to the agency or new in their roles. Earlier this week, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fired 170 probationary employees.
The OCC declined to comment on the terminations when reached by email Friday afternoon.
The OCC is the federal agency tasked with overseeing nationally chartered banks, federal savings associations and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. The agency is housed under the Treasury Department, but it is self-funded through assessments charged to the institutions it supervises.
Shortly after taking office in January, President Donald Trump directed all government agencies to reduce their workforces and cut costs wherever possible. He has tasked billionaire businessman and White House advisor Elon Musk with overseeing much of this activity through a special audit group known as Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The White House has since said in a legal filing that Musk is not in charge of DOGE, but merely a White House advisor to the president.
As part of this effort, the administration has effectively closed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the agency tasked with overseeing the nation’s largest banks as well as nonbank financial institutions for consumer compliance — by firing workers, directing the remaining employees to stop all work and shuttering its headquarters in Washington.
The City of Baltimore earlier this month sued the CFPB after its acting director and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought zeroed out the bureau’s quarterly budget draw from the Federal Reserve, a move that the city said was arbitrary and capricious and would negatively affect city initiatives funded through the CFPB. New York Attorney General Letitia James and several other state attorneys general joined in an amicus brief supporting the city’s suit.
It was initially unclear if non-cabinet agencies, such as the Federal Reserve and FDIC, would have to comply with the reduction directive, though leaders said they would follow the spirit of the order. Then, earlier this week, Trump issued another order, asserting that even so-called independent agencies are accountable to the executive branch.
The OCC came into 2025 with a workforce of 3,630, according to statistics published on its website. The agency had built up its numbers in recent years after reductions during the first Trump administration, which saw its staffing fall from just shy of 4,000 in 2017 to less than 3,500 in 2020.
Ebrima Santos Sanneh and Claire Williams contributed to this report.
