More than 100 of the 200 positions RTI International is cutting are in North Carolina. The Research Triangle Park nonprofit says the reductions will take place over the next three months as it works to support its long-term performance. They follow a year in which RTI lost more than a third of its workforce amid federal funding cuts.
According to WRAL, RTI employs about 3,400 people worldwide, including roughly 1,600 in North Carolina as of this month. Impacted staff members are eligible to apply for other open positions at the organization. In a statement Thursday, RTI described the cuts as part of an effort to streamline its operations, Axios reported. The Triangle-based institute has laid off hundreds of employees over the past year and a half.
A Year of Shrinking Headcount
The latest cuts follow several rounds of workforce reductions beginning in early 2025. In March of that year, RTI told state officials it would cut about 525 jobs in North Carolina and announced layoffs affecting 340 U.S. employees, including 177 in the state, citing unexpected changes in federal funding, WRAL reported. RTI also filed a WARN notice for a mass layoff at its Durham location, as reported by EdNC.
By June 2025, RTI had reduced its global workforce to 3,844 employees, with 1,885 working in North Carolina, according to the News & Observer. A later reduction brought approximately 120 more layoffs, including around 75 in North Carolina. Per Axios, RTI's North Carolina headcount stood at about 1,800 employees in 2025, down roughly 18% from the start of that year, with more than a third of its total workforce eliminated over the course of the year.
Federal Funding Pulled the Rug Out
The federal government made clear it would slash budgets and cancel grants for RTI's key partners, Axios reported, and the fallout has hit the institute's two biggest sources of revenue: the National Institutes of Health and the now-closed U.S. Agency for International Development. The federal government accounted for 84% of RTI's total revenue in 2022 and 2023, the News & Observer's reporting shows, leaving the organization with little cushion when Washington cut back on scientific and humanitarian research.
By March 2025, at least 80 of RTI's projects had been canceled or ordered stopped, slashing operating revenue by almost 30%, per the same WRAL account. The NIH alone sent RTI $397 million in grants in 2024, but that figure had fallen to just $59 million by the time the News & Observer reported on it in 2025. USAID funding, which made up roughly $168 million — about 10% of RTI's revenue — in 2023, dried up entirely once the agency was shuttered.
What the records show
The North Carolina Department of Commerce’s 2025 WARN report lists a permanent-layoff notice for 276 workers at RTI’s Durham location, received March 25, 2025, with an effective date of May 1. The notice records affected positions; it does not establish how many layoffs were ultimately completed.
North Carolina Department of Commerce records document the notice, while Science reported that RTI told the publication the federal government canceled 170 of its grants and contracts in fiscal 2025. RTI did not provide a dollar amount for those cancellations.
Slow Grants, Shifting Strategy
The funding crunch tracks with a broader slowdown across federal science agencies. The NIH ran roughly 44 days behind its average grant-obligation pace in fiscal year 2025 and remained 42 days behind through early July 2026, according to NPR. NPR also found that grant renewals have been arriving more than 90 days late at four to six times the rate seen between 2021 and 2024.
In response, RTI has been shifting its strategy toward defense and commercial health work, according to the News & Observer. Axios reported that the Trump administration has been exploring ways to reimagine clinical trials to speed up drug development, an area where RTI has built expertise. RTI is not alone in absorbing the fallout from federal cuts: Durham-based nonprofit FHI 360 had laid off close to half its U.S. workforce since the start of February 2025, the News & Observer reported, underscoring how deeply the funding pullback has reshaped the Triangle's research sector.
