FDA leadership says the agency is hiring to rebuild capacity after more than a year of workforce attrition tied to DOGE-era cuts and leadership turnover. Acting chief of staff and deputy commissioner Lowell Zeta told BIO 2026 attendees that the FDA has secured about 600 new hires in onboarding clearance and is seeking an additional roughly 1,600. The plan reflects a shift from emergency stabilization toward restoring sustained review operations and staff retention. FDA leaders also described steps aimed at morale recovery, including retention efforts amid departures and a culture push to restore institutional knowledge. Separately, the FDA town hall framing also emphasized operational readiness for future initiatives and workforce backfill as prerequisites to avoiding backlog risk. The hiring update arrives alongside continued uncertainty about agency stability and execution timelines across CDER and CBER workstreams.