The Pentagon will place most of its nearly 800,000 civilian employees on unpaid leave for 11 days through September to "survive" steep automatic budget cuts, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday. The Pentagon chief told an audience of civilian defense workers that he regretted the decision and had tried to limit the length of the furloughs while safeguarding the military's combat readiness. "I'm sorry, but I have to be honest and deal with the facts. You deserve honesty and you deserve the facts," he said at a conference hall in Alexandria, Virginia.

Washington, Apr 2 (EFE).- U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will return part of his salary in solidarity with those civilian employees of the Defense Department who must take pay cuts in the form of unpaid leave, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Tuesday. Hagel will return as much as 14 percent of his salary via a legal mechanism to return money to the Treasury Department, even thought he is not subject to the pay cuts, Little said. As defense chief, Hagel earns an annual salary of about $200,000, according to the daily Politico.

* Justice Department employees among first to get notices * Military's 800,000 civilian employees expected to be hardest hit * Cuts could affect border patrol, meat inspections, airports By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - The nation's largest employer, the U.S. government, has begun notifying its vast and varied workforce to prepare for reduced hours and slashed paychecks over the next seven months as big budget cuts that were once an abstraction became a reality Friday.

The White House has published a detailed state-by-state report on the impact of automatic budget cuts which will hit the US government and economy Friday. The $85 billion worth of cuts -- known as the sequester -- were designed to be painful in a bid to force lawmakers to reach a more palatable compromise to rein in the massive debt. But President Barack Obama's Democrats and rival Republicans failed to reach a deal and have been trading blame instead. Here is a detailed breakdown of the impact of the sequester, according to the latest White House estimate: