Some states have a message for laid-off federal employees: Come work for us instead.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) is fast-tracking workers fired by the Trump administration or impacted by federal budget cuts into state agency jobs. A bill in Washington State would give fired federal workers priority consideration for state government jobs. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is marketing state government jobs to former federal employees.
“The federal government might say, ‘You’re fired,’ but here in New York, we say, ‘You’re hired.’ In fact, we love federal workers,” Hochul said in a Tuesday statement encouraging such workers to apply for jobs in state government. “Whatever your skills, we value public service.”
State leaders are seizing the opportunity to recruit skilled federal workers, as the Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk, clear-cuts federal positions.
The recent firings have yet to show up in government data, but media reports estimate that tens of thousands of people have been laid off nationwide. In Washington State alone, officials say 650 former federal employees have filed for unemployment since the beginning of 2025, 26% more than by this time last year.
The U.S. government in January employed about 3 million people across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., according to federal statistics.
California, Texas, Virginia, Maryland and Florida were home to the highest numbers of civilian federal workers at that time, according to estimates from Ben Zipperer, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Federal workers are particularly important to the D.C.-area economy. In January they comprised 13.2% of civilian workers in the capital, 7.3% of civilian workers in Maryland and 5.6% of civilian workers in Virginia, according to Zipperer’s calculations.
Promoting open state government jobs is just one of the ways state leaders are seeking to help former federal workers.
Maryland has launched a new website to help former federal workers, contractors and grantees apply for unemployment benefits, health insurance and new jobs, for instance. So has Virginia.
But while Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) has blasted the Trump administration’s cost-cutting campaign, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) says he supports it.
“We have a federal government that is inefficient and we have an administration that is taking on that challenge of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, and driving efficiency in our federal government,” Youngkin said Monday. “It needs to happen.”