By Katherine Gallagher Robbins and Areeba Haider
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.
Yet, the Trump administration has taken aim at the federal workforce, promising intimidation, proposing efforts to increase the power of political appointees over career scientists and medical experts, and aiming to cut the number of federal workers dramatically. Indeed his efforts have already begun: on day one, Trump signed an executive order (EO) to create a “Schedule F” class of federal workers, effectively politicizing the federal workforce and making it possible to fire workers working in what were traditionally career, non-partisan roles for now failing to show adequate, perceived loyalty to President Trump. While the National Treasury Employees Union has filed suit against the EO, the changes could impact as many as 50,000 federal workers, replacing non-partisan policy experts with political loyalists. The Administration has also begun targeting workers who don’t align with their agenda, including putting on leave career employees at USAID and those working on diversity, equity and inclusion programming, as well as firing 18 inspectors general. These efforts are especially worrisome given President Trump’s cuts during his first term to agencies that support U.S. workers by overseeing and enforcing labor standards, including the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, which champions the interests and economic security of women workers.
Cutting the federal workforce harms essential services, impacts the economy and especially affects the South
Federal employees provide essential services to people – and when they are under threat, so too is that important work. Pushing out federal employees with considerable expertise, such as scientists in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or cybersecurity experts, would contribute to a “brain drain” of critical knowledge and politicizing these roles would “degrade government performance,” harming all Americans.
It would also impact the economy overall. Costing hundreds of thousands of workers – or more – their jobs could dramatically spike unemployment, likely reducing GDP. While there is no precise estimate of the degree of proposed changes, we estimate that if the administration cut 500,000 federal workers it could spike the unemployment rate by more than a quarter of a percentage point.
These cuts would not be evenly felt across the U.S. While federal workers live across the country, they are concentrated in the South. We find that nearly half of federal civilian workers live in the South (49 percent), compared to 38 percent of all workers. However, it is not only Southern states where federal civilian workers are overrepresented as part of the workforce. Federal workers are especially likely to work in Alaska, D.C, Hawai’i, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Virgina, West Virginia and Wyoming. Disruptions to this workforce would have economic impacts in their state and local communities.
Black women, Native women and veteran women workers will be especially impacted by federal workforce cuts
Men are the majority of federal civilian workers (55 percent), though women account for half or more federal workers in six states. And some groups of women are especially likely to be federal workers. National Partnership analysis shows:
- Veterans are especially likely to work for the federal government: nearly 1 in 5 federal workers are veterans, compared to fewer than 1 in 20 workers overall.
- Women veterans are especially likely to be federal workers: the federal goverment employs 17 percent of women veteran workers – a larger share than women non-veterans or men, regardless of veteran status.
- Disabled workers are also especially likely to work for the federal government. Nearly 1 in 10 (9.4 percent) federal civilian workers are disabled, compared to 7.4 percent of workers overall.
- Close to a quarter of federal civilian workers are women of color – and American Indian Alaska Native women and Black women are especially likely to be in the federal workforce. Black women’s share of the federal civilian workforce is almost double their share of the overall workforce; Native American women’s share is more than triple.
The federal government – as well as state and local governments – play an essential role in our lives and our communities by keeping us safe, providing essential benefits and services, and growing our economy. Efforts to attack these workers – and by extension the government and its services more broadly – harm us all.
Methods note: Demographic profile of federal civilian workers is National Partnership for Women & Families analysis of American Community Survey (ACS) 2023 data via www.ipums.org. Figures are based on worker’s residence rather than duty station and do not capture federal workers living abroad. Racial groups do not include Latinas who are analyzed separately. Estimates of the disabled workforce are likely to be an undercount due to the ACS measurement of disability. Women account for half or more of federal workers in Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Vermont and Wisconsin. We classify states as being especially overrepresented if their share of the federal civilian workforce is at least 1.5 times their share of the overall workforce. View a map of Census regions. National Partnership analysis of the increase in unemployment is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics labor market data for December 2024 and captures the impact of 500,000 more unemployed workers on the unemployment rate. A cut of 500,000 workers is used to demonstrate potential impacts; the actual extent of cuts is uncertain though Trump advisors have “proposed cutting 50% of the workforce by firing everyone whose Social Security number ends in an odd number” – upwards of 1 million workers – which would have a far greater impact on the unemployment rate.
