Anger, confusion as US federal workers face more layoffs
NEW YORK—Workers across the United States responded with anger and confusion as they grappled with aggressive efforts to shrink the federal workforce being led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
While much of Donald Trump administration’s attention was focused on disrupting the bureaucracy in Washington, the broad-based effort to slash the government’s labor force, beginning with probationary employees, was impacting a far wider swath of workers.
As layoff notices were sent out agency by agency, federal employees from Michigan to Florida were left reeling from being told that their services were no longer needed.
In a sign of how chaotic the firings have been, some who received layoff notices had already accepted the administration’s buyout or deferred resignation offer, under which they were supposed to be paid until Sept. 30 if they agreed to quit.
But this raised questions as to whether others who signed the deal would still be fired.
On Friday evening, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—which serves as the federal government’s human resources department—acknowledged that some employees may have received termination notices in error but said the voluntary buyout would be honored.
So far only 75,000 workers have accepted the buyout offer.
‘It’s a new day’
Nicholas Detter, a specialist at the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture, described the mass terminations as “slash and burn.”
The 25-year-old, who had been helping farmers in Kansas reduce soil and water erosion, said he was fired by email late Thursday night. “None of this has been done thoughtfully or carefully,” he said.
Detter’s termination left him feeling “disrespected” and “a little bit helpless,” he said, adding that he had received “completely positive” evaluations about his work before he was fired.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Friday said her agency had invited a DOGE team with “open arms,” adding that layoffs “will be forthcoming.”
“Clearly, it’s a new day,” Rollins said at the White House. “I think the American people spoke on November 5th, that they believe that government was too big.”
Workers forced out
The White House and OPM declined to say on Friday how many probationary workers, who generally have less than a year on the job, have so far been dismissed.
According to OPM data as of March last year, 220,000 workers had less than a year on the job.
OPM has given agencies until 8 p.m. on Tuesday to issue layoff notices, according to a source familiar with the plan.
On Thursday night, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees who had served for less than two years.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said these employees included researchers working on cancer treatment, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure.
Dozens were also fired from the Department of Education, including special education specialists and student aid officials, according to a union that represents the agency’s workers.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1,300 probationary employees—roughly a tenth of its total workers—are being forced out.
‘Out of the blue’
Marine veteran Andrew Lennox was part of a new supervisor training program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VA) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
He said he received an email “out of the blue” Thursday evening informing him that he was being terminated.
“In order to help veterans, you just fired a veteran,” said Lennox, 35, who was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
He said he “would love nothing more” than to keep working. “This is my family and I would like to do this forever.”
David Rice, a disabled Army paratrooper who has been on probation since joining the US Department of Energy in September, also learned on Thursday night that he had lost his job.
Rice, 50, said he’d been led to believe that his job would likely be safe. He had been working as a foreign affairs specialist on health matters relating to radiation exposure.
When he logged into his computer for a meeting late that evening with Japanese representatives, he saw the email saying he had been fired.
‘Devastating impact’
“It’s just been chaos,” said Rice, who had just bought a house in Melbourne, Florida.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and a group of other unions filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging`what they call unlawful terminations.
Terminating probationary employees who have gone through extensive training “will have a devastating impact on agency missions and government operations,” NTEU president Doreen Greenwald wrote in a Thursday letter to union members.
She said many federal agencies are already “severely understaffed due to years of frozen or slashed budgets that prevented them from replacing retiring employees.”
Labor activists and government workers rallied outside the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington on Friday morning to protest the dismissals.
“They’re picking us off, one by one,” said one federal contractor who has not yet lost her job, but who, like others, declined to identify herself for fear of reprisal. “First, it’s the probationary workers, then we’re next.”
Economic data
In a post on its website, the VA said its dismissal of more than 1,000 employees “will save the department more than $98 million per year” so it will be better equipped to help the veterans.
But Trump’s mass layoffs could come back to bite him in terms of economic data, as the layoffs are unlikely to yield significant deficit savings.
The government spends about $270 billion annually compensating civilian federal workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office—with about 60 percent going to workers at the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Veterans Affairs.
Even if the government slashed all of those jobs, it would still run a deficit of over $1 trillion.
Monthly jobs reports could start to show a slowdown in hiring, if not turn negative at some point after the February numbers are released.
The last time the economy lost jobs was in December 2020, when the United States was still recovering from the pandemic.
