I wrote last week how the Securities and Exchange Commission had 18% of its staff depart in fiscal year 2025 thanks to the DOGE efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce. For Fiscal Year 2027, the SEC is proposing to reduce its budget by another 11%. However, the SEC is proposing to add another 153 FTE over 2026 staffing levels.
At the same time the SEC notes:
As markets evolve, the SEC’s responsibilities continue to grow and become more complex. The agency now oversees more than 33,000 entities, including more than 13,500 registered funds, more than 16,300 investment advisers, more than 3,200 broker-dealers, 29 national securities exchanges, 111 alternative trading systems, more than 400 municipal advisors, 319 transfer agents, 3 security-based swap data repositories, 10 credit rating agencies, 38 self-regulatory organizations, and 6 active registered clearing agencies.
A big chunk in the proposed reduction comes from $145 million of balances credited to 2027. The actual obligations from 2026 are $2.031 billion to $2.078 billion in 2027.
You can see in the FTEs by Program below that the SEC is trying to recover from the losses in 2025.
Sources: