The Fed's building budget grew 93% since 2020. Its own headcount is being cut 10%.

The Federal Reserve is renovating its own headquarters: the Eccles Building and the adjacent 1951 Constitution Avenue building, neither comprehensively updated since the 1930s. Two of the Fed's own documents, five years apart, put a number on what that has cost.▸ In June 2020, the Board's independent inspector general recorded a combined budget for both buildings of $1,273.4 million. As of March 2026, the Fed's own building-project FAQ puts the same two buildings at $2.46 billion — a 93% increase. Over roughly the same period, the Board told its own staff it intends to shrink headcount by a tenth.

The Fed's own inspector general — an office the Board itself describes as having "full access to the project information on costs, contracts, schedules, and expenditures" — put the approved budget for Eccles at $593.4 million and 1951 Constitution Avenue at $680.0 million as of June 2020, a combined $1,273.4 million, excluding the separate $41.6 million spent acquiring the 1951 building.▸ Both figures come from a single table in a single audit report, so the combined number is not this piece's estimate — it is the OIG's own sum. Today the Fed's own building-project FAQ, last updated March 27, 2026, states plainly: "The Board-approved budget for renovating the Eccles building and the 1951 Constitution Avenue building is $2.46 billion." That FAQ attributes the increase to design changes made after consulting outside review agencies, gaps between original and actual costs for materials, equipment, and labor, and unforeseen conditions — "more asbestos than anticipated, toxic contamination in soil, and a sinkhole." The renovation has since drawn a Justice Department inquiry and a request from Chair Powell himself for the inspector general to take a fresh look at the cost.

The same Board that approves the renovation's budget also approves its own staffing.▸ Its 2025 budget documents show 3,291 approved full-time-equivalent positions — Board staff plus contractors — across divisions from Supervision & Regulation (506) to Information Technology (594). Attached to that same 2025 budget is a one-line institutional decision: "The Board also announced that it initiated a plan to reduce its overall headcount by ten percent over the next few years and has instituted a voluntary deferred resignation program." The Fed has not published a target headcount to go with that percentage; applying it to the 2025 FTE base implies roughly 329 fewer Washington positions. Reporting on the internal memo behind the announcement — which Banking Dive says it reviewed directly — describes the same 10% target applied across the whole Federal Reserve System, roughly 24,000 employees including the 12 Reserve Banks, which would put the System-wide reduction over 2,000 jobs by the end of 2027. That figure comes from a memo the Fed has not itself published, so it is included here as reported, not as a Fed-stated number.

The $1,273.4M and $2.46B figures are both scoped to the Eccles and 1951 Constitution Avenue buildings only, from two Fed-adjacent documents five years apart; the 3,291-to-2,962 FTE comparison is this piece's own arithmetic applying the Board's announced 10% target, not a published Fed headcount goal, and the ~24,000-employee, System-wide framing is sourced to press reporting on an unpublished internal memo.