U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has proposed to eliminate 2,300 jobs from the State Department in order to optimize the budget, AP reported.

According to the agency, his proposal also calls for cutting back on hiring new diplomats, from as many as five classes of incoming foreign service officers per year to one or two.

As it was noted, the staff cuts would amount to about 3 percent of the department's roughly 75,000-strong workforce.