CFPB’s New DC Home Set to Match Trump’s Plan to Shrink Agency

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a new headquarters in Washington that will accommodate the stripped-down agency the Trump administration envisions.

The CFPB is set to move in the coming months into a building in Washington’s southwest quadrant that is also home to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter who requested anonymity to discuss agency operations.

The property is expected to have a capacity of around 550 employees, the people said.

That would closely track a plan the CFPB submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March to cull about half of the agency’s remaining workforce, leaving 556 people in place.

The CFPB didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The agency currently has around 1,100 employees, according to a person familiar with the matter who discussed anonymity to discuss personnel issues, down from about 1,700 before Russell Vought took over as acting chief and made repeated attempts at mass layoffs. The latest reduction-in-force plan calls for major cuts in the CFPB’s enforcement and supervision units, among others.

The full DC Circuit is weighing whether to allow the CFPB to move forward with that plan or send it to Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who issued an order last year halting Vought’s moves to dismantle the agency.

Return to Office

The new office may result in a wave of departures, even if the courts ultimately block the Trump administration’s latest plan, the people who spoke with Bloomberg Law said.

They expect Vought to issue a return-to-work order in conjunction with opening the new office. CFPB employees have been working from home since February 2025, when Vought essentially made the agency’s current headquarters near the White House off-limits to career staff.

The CFPB had 680 staff members in Washington, 16 in Virginia, and 13 in Maryland as of March, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.

The remaining approximately 400 employees are spread around the country, with the largest concentrations in California, New York, Illinois, and Texas, according to the OPM data.

As part of his initial plans to gut the CFPB, Vought shuttered regional offices around the country.

It’s unclear whether the pending return-to-work order will require CFPB employees outside of the Washington area to report to the new headquarters or risk being fired.

CFPB employees who don’t want to return to the office or are located far away may choose to leave the agency rather than comply with the order, the people familiar with the agency’s plans said.

That could give Vought a head start on the staff reductions he’s seeking, they said.