Johns Hopkins lays off 110 as federal research funding shrinks

Johns Hopkins University laid off about 110 employees in June, trimming jobs across the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Carey Business School, university administration and other divisions as shrinking federal research dollars forced the institution to scale back.

Its multiyear federal research portfolio fell by more than $500 million in 2025, driven by a 43 percent drop in federal research funding and a 28 percent decline in awards from the year before. Hopkins also lost more than $800 million in USAID grants last year and ended 90 grants from other agencies, a hit that led to more than 2,200 job losses, including 247 positions in the United States and 1,975 positions across 44 countries. Another 29 international employees and 78 domestic employees were furloughed on reduced schedules.

Before the layoffs, Hopkins had already imposed a hiring freeze, paused annual pay increases for employees earning more than $80,000, eliminated vacant positions, cut discretionary spending and reduced five-year capital project spending by 20 percent. University leaders said those steps were not enough to offset the scale of the funding decline.

Johns Hopkins is the largest private employer in Maryland, and an independent economic analysis estimated that Hopkins and its health system generated a $40 billion impact for the state and supported 149,000 jobs. The same analysis pegged the university’s annual economic impact in Baltimore at $19.4 billion and said it supports one out of every five jobs in the city.

Hopkins says the funding turbulence is affecting faculty, students, graduate students and postdocs as federal grants stall or disappear. To soften that blow, the university has created a Research Resilience Fund that will set aside $60 million a year for two years beginning in June 2026 to support faculty, students and research teams facing terminations, delays or disruptions. Hopkins said the fund will be backed in part by budgetary reallocation, belt-tightening savings and an $8.5 million contribution from the State of Maryland.