By Areeba Haider and Kate Gallagher Robbins
Federal workers perform essential jobs in communities across the country to protect consumers, workers and our health. From processing Social Security benefits to supporting survivors of domestic violence, from rooting out discrimination to maintaining our national parks, federal workers work hard to serve the American people.
As the Trump Administration continues its attacks on federal workers – through mass firings, unprecedented “buyouts,” executive orders and intimidation – the impacts of losing the hard work of civil servants are becoming more clear. Cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services will stymy work to protect consumers, respond to infectious disease outbreaks and keep food safe. In states like Colorado and Alaska, cuts to the National Park Service, Forest Service and more could wreak havoc on their ability to provide services to visitors throughout the year and halt important research. Federal employees who oversee and manage much of the Western power grid have also been let go; at the Bonneville Power Administration, which operates 75 percent of the Northwest’s power grid, around 430 positions have been eliminated and concerns of major power outages are rising.
These cuts are part of a broader strategy by the Trump Administration to decimate the federal government and expand presidential power to ensure that our systems of governance continue to benefit the already wealthy and powerful. President Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk are being deceptive that cuts to the federal workforce are necessary for cost-savings and efficiency to distract from the truth – federal workers are being dismissed, not because of their performance or for merit, but to allow the Administration to claim new room in the federal budget for drastic tax cuts that would be a windfall for a small group of wealthy and well-connected individuals.
The federal government is the country’s largest employer and civil servants live and work in every state across the nation. Federal workers are also paid more equitably across the wage spectrum, paving the way for greater income equality for the workforce, underscoring the importance of federal jobs for the economy even beyond the essential services they provide. Previous research by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that cuts to the federal workforce will harm communities and the overall economy, and especially impact Black women, Native women and veteran women workers. Our new research shows the numbers of federal workers in each state by race, gender, disability and veteran status, underscoring the harm to local economies and every community across the nation as these public servants are put out of work. Some findings include that:
- In Alaska, the more than 20,000 federal workers make up 6.1 percent of the state’s workforce; 35 percent of those federal workers are veterans.
- Women make up the largest share of the federal workforce in Nebraska (51 percent), the District of Columbia (53 percent), and Vermont (54 percent)
- Black women make up more than a fifth of all federal workers in Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and South Carolina
Methods note: National Partnership for Women & Families analysis of American Community Survey 2018-2022 five-year data via www.ipums.org. Figures are a five-year data set to have sufficient sample sizes for state demographic breakdowns. Figures are for self-reported data for federal civilian workers and are based on worker’s residence rather than duty station and do not capture federal workers living abroad. This analysis excludes workers in the postal service industry, 86 percent of whom work for the federal government. While the USPS may face threats under the Trump administration, these workers were not, for example, offered the “deferred buyout” program offered to other federal employees. Racial groups do not include Latinos who are analyzed separately. Estimates of the disabled workforce are likely to be an undercount due to the ACS measurement of disability. Figures may differ from other totals of federal workers depending on the methodology of individual surveys.
