States See Workforce Opportunity in Federal Layoffs

The mass reduction of the federal workforce being carried out by the Trump administration could affect states’ budgets and economies in ways that are tough to predict. But some states are treating it as an opportunity to attract experienced civil servants to roles that have long been vacant.

In the last few weeks, several states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Hawaii, have launched targeted campaigns to recruit fired federal workers into state government jobs. Those campaigns follow on local efforts to connect fired workers with new public- and private-sector opportunities in some of the places hardest hit by federal cuts.

Accurate figures on the number of laid-off workers are hard to come by, as some workers have been rehired by the Trump administration shortly after losing their jobs in recent weeks, but reports suggest that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has so far cut more than 100,000 federal jobs. More cuts are expected, both through Elon Musk’s efforts with DOGE and potentially as a result of congressional budget negotiations. The layoffs come at a time when state and local governments are still working to fill job vacancies that rose during the pandemic.

“We need to look at this as an opportunity to bring folks on board that have the expertise that we need,” says Neil Weaver, Pennsylvania’s secretary of administration.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, signed an executive order in March directing the Office of Administration to launch an “awareness and recruitment campaign” to attract federal workers to state jobs. It also directed the office to treat applicants’ experience in federal government roles as equivalent to state work experience. Weaver says the campaign dovetails with efforts the state has already made to make state jobs more attractive to potential applicants and to speed up the process of hiring workers. Applicants to public-sector jobs typically have to endure a much longer hiring process than they would in the private sector. Shapiro’s office has implemented skills-based hiring practices that don’t require college degrees for many positions and improved worker benefits. It has also reduced the time it takes to fill positions. The average hiring time is now about 61 days, down from 90 days, according to the state.

Pennsylvania launched a website advertising thousands of open positions geared toward former federal workers. It’s already received 1,100 job applications from people with federal experience, Weaver says.

Some governors are hoping to hire newly unemployed federal workers even as they criticize the Trump administration’s cuts. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, for example, has launched a campaign called “You’re Hired,” a twist on President Donald Trump’s catchphrase from "The Apprentice."

“Her sentiment is that, ideally, these individuals are re-employed by the federal government and continue to perform the critical services that we so dearly need,” says Timothy Hogues, commissioner of the New York State Department of Civil Service.

But in the meantime, New York is hoping those workers will fill some of its 7,000 vacant positions, Hogues says. The state has reduced that number from about 13,000 a few years ago, partly by launching a program that waives certain civil service requirements to fill some jobs. Like Pennsylvania, New York has also worked to improve worker benefits and reduce the amount of time it takes to hire people. “Post-pandemic, we are really in competition with the private sector and nonprofit sector, so our process can’t be what it was,” Hogues says.

While some Republican-led states like Virginia are targeting former federal workers for job opportunities, there is a clear partisan bent to the issue. Democratic lawmakers in Nevada recently asked Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, to prioritize hiring former federal workers. Lombardo dismissed the request as “grandstanding.” Other Republican-led states have launched their own DOGE-like efforts to cut spending and jobs. Hogues says that New York has been criticized for expanding the state government at the same time that the federal workforce is being cut in the name of efficiency, but notes that the thousands of vacant positions were accounted for prior to the recent round of federal layoffs.

As much as some states are hoping to capitalize on the newly available crop of civil servants, they say they’re not giving preferential treatment in the hiring process to former federal workers. Their efforts are mainly in marketing open positions to workers who’ve lost their jobs. But that still matters, says Caitlin Lewis, executive director at Work for America, a nonprofit group that works to rebuild the public-sector workforce.

“We should not discount the value of marketing. It is something government does not do well when it comes to recruiting talent, but it really matters,” Lewis says. “There’s real return on investment.”

Lewis is spearheading an effort called Civic Match which is meant to help workers find state and local government jobs. The initiative was created before Trump took office, in anticipation of the flood of federal workers who typically leave their jobs any time the White House changes hands. But it’s become more relevant amid the mass federal layoffs of the last few weeks. Before the inauguration, around 8 percent of the resumes submitted to Civic Match came from former federal workers. But they now make up more than half of submissions, Lewis says.

“We never could have expected the volume of need that we are now experiencing,” she says. “These are not folks who were going to stay or leave depending on who the president was.”

So far, 71 cities, 32 counties and 28 states are using the platform, according to Lewis. It’s been useful for connecting people with specialized expertise to open jobs. Early in March, for example, hiring managers in Minnesota reached out to Civic Match looking for a hydrologist; the platform had resumes not only from hydrologists but from hydrologists who specifically wanted to live in Minnesota, Lewis says. The group is receiving between 500 and 700 resumes a week.

States are navigating a lot of financial uncertainty at the moment. Most states enjoyed budget surpluses over the last few years, buoyed by economic growth and federal pandemic relief funding. But that funding has begun to lapse, and more states are anticipating budget deficits in coming years. Federal funding also accounts for more than a third of state revenues. With that funding increasingly imperiled, Lewis acknowledges, “There are absolutely headwinds on the horizon.”

The good news, she says: “The talent you need to help you navigate these headwinds is available, and looking for jobs.”