On August 26, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Fed and CFPB released a report examining the impact of workforce and contract actions initiated by the CFPB in early 2025 on the Bureau’s operations. The congressionally requested review assessed the effects of stop-work orders, the dismissal of all 182 probationary and term employees, a planned reduction in force (RIF) covering roughly 87 percent of the Bureau’s workforce, and the cancellation of 79 of its 525 active contracts. The OIG found that stop-work orders issued in February 2025 temporarily halted most Bureau functions, pausing 463 supervisory events and 80 enforcement investigations. Contract actions disrupted the CFPB’s consumer complaint call center, which experienced a one-day outage, and its complaint database, which did not route complaints to companies for approximately two weeks. As of June, about 17,100 complaints required manual routing, of which roughly 3,800 had been pending for more than 30 days. The cancellation of the agency’s information security continuous monitoring contract also limited the CFPB’s ability to assess its cybersecurity posture. The agency subsequently reinstated 16 canceled contracts and awarded 59 new contracts for primary or operational functions.

The OIG found that workforce reduction actions — including the dismissals and the RIF — had limited operational impact because federal courts halted or reversed them. As of July, the CFPB remains enjoined from conducting RIF actions, with litigation stayed pending confirmation of a new director or until January 4, 2027 (previously covered by InfoBytes here). In March, the acting director approved a revised restructuring plan that would reduce the workforce by 618 employees rather than the roughly 1,400 originally targeted (covered here). Separately, the CFPB dismissed 18 ongoing litigation cases during the review period and, as of January, had authorized staff to pursue seven litigations and four postjudgment cases while initiating two new investigations and six postjudgment cases. The OIG noted that it was unable to interview agency leadership because the acting director was unavailable and the chief legal officer declined its interview request due to pending litigation, and considered this a scope limitation. Following issuance of the draft report, the CFPB in June announced steps to improve its consumer complaint process, including formally defining backlog as complaints pending manual processing for more than 30 days. The review did not assess whether the actions complied with applicable laws, regulations, or policies.