For decades, over 100 federal agencies shared responsibility for emergency management, leading to inefficiencies, including during Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. In response, President Jimmy Carter established FEMA via an executive order signed in the month after the disaster. FEMA became an independent agency within DHS in 2006.
FEMA’s mission is to help people prepare for disasters, coordinate federal response during disasters, and support recovery. When a state, local, or tribal government requests federal help responding to an event,
the president approves the aid. In recent years, the federal government has declared disasters during hurricanes,
wildfires, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Staffing FEMA is a challenge. The Government Accountability Office reports that the pandemic, the southern border, and increasingly severe natural disasters have created high demand for FEMA’s services. At the start of fiscal year 2022, FEMA had approximately 11,400 disaster employees — but a goal of 17,670.
Overall employment at FEMA rose steadily for a decade, from 13,652 in 2015 to 24,348 in 2024. This includes part-time, full-time employees and other employees who work with the agency for a limited time, namely:
- Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees (CORE) who are hired for specific work during open disasters for two to four years.
- Reservists who support disaster operations in affected communities. These are temporary, on-call workers who are appointed for up to two years.
- FEMA Corps (part of AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps), who spend 10 months completing FEMA-related service projects. On Tuesday, the program notified workers of early departures due to DOGE-related changes. As of Thursday, the FEMA Corps page on fema.gov was no longer accessible.
In federal fiscal year 2024, FEMA spent over $28.1 billion on disaster relief, employee salaries, and contracts (among other spending priorities). Most of these funds were spent in California and Florida.
Disasters during this period included Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which killed 219 and 32 people, respectively.
