Nearly 60 employees at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have left their jobs in recent months mainly because of the "ebb and flow" of federal funding.

About 40 of the employees received involuntary layoff notices, said Greg Koller, spokesman for the lab run by Battelle for the Department of Energy. But 17 other jobs were transferred to Fluor Hanford at DOE's request.

Koller said budget cuts to some programs and changes in the scope of some of the work triggered some of the layoffs. But a continuing budget resolution approved by Congress to keep fiscal 2007 funding at the same level as fiscal 2006 funding, which ended Sept. 30, also contributed, he said.

The lab, which operates on an annual budget of approximately $700 million, has 4,000 employees.

The greatest number of jobs lost were in computational science, with a few in the biological sciences area.

Koller said the lab typically goes through some ebb and flow on positions each fall during the budget cycle, but tries to protect employee positions by reassigning affected staff elsewhere in the lab.

The issuance of layoff notices to more than three dozen employees this fiscal year is greater than what usually occurs, he said. "It is a last resort," Koller said.

"Historically, the normal flow of federal funding and priorities means funding for specific research areas or particular projects occasionally is reduced or dries up altogether," Koller said. "When this happens, our first priority is to find other projects within the lab and redeploy the impacted staff if at all possible," he explained.

The 17 employees involved in ground water monitoring were moved to Fluor Hanford after DOE officials decided to transfer that program from the lab to that contractor.

Koller said the lab's budget is in good shape, "with strong funding in environmental, energy, national and homeland security, and other research areas."