139,000 Pa. jobs at risk

President Donald Trump’s program-slashing budget legislation is likely to create a ripple effect of lost jobs in the private sector, which is just the latest blow to workers who have grappled with uncertainty this year.

While unemployment in Pennsylvania has remained below 4% and below the national average, Trump’s agenda has left many concerned about their job security.

That includes federal workers in the Philadelphia area, some of whom have lost their jobs or are choosing to leave their positions as the administration reshapes their workplaces. Trump’s policies have also left some non-government organizations and businesses scrambling to figure out how to continue their work and keep paying employees.

Cure4Camden, a violence intervention program, lost roughly $2 million in federal grants in April and had to lay off seven employees.

AmeriCorps programs lost $22.2 million in funding for Pennsylvania-based programs, including grants that paid for people to work in local schools.

At Temple University, an assistant professor in the Department of Nursing shifted around job responsibilities to avoid layoffs after a grant was canceled.

The president’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” as it’s been called, has posed the possibility of additional funding challenges. Some proposed cuts put thousands of Pennsylvania jobs at risk, experts warn.

“We don’t really know how bad this is going to be,” said Marc Stier, executive director of the Pennsylvania Policy Center.

Pennsylvania gets about $199 billion in federal funds annually, excluding Social Security, his team estimates. That includes money received by local governments, funds disbursed directly to individuals such as farmers, and spending to train doctors and conduct research at universities.

Stier has watched Trump’s agenda play out and the bill evolve in Congress, and estimates that a 5% cut to that $199 billion “is not inconceivable.”

And if that came to fruition — a $9.95 billion decrease in federal money to Pennsylvania’s economy — Stier said the result could be a loss of 139,000 jobs.

That’s about 2.2% of Pennsylvania’s current employed workforce, which is just under 6.3 million. Those jobs would be across sectors, including farmers, grocery workers, and healthcare employees. Here’s how that could unfold.

Trump’s bill looks to cut federal spending on food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, passing some of that expense to the states.

Stier estimates that if Pennsylvania were required to pick up 10% of the cost, some to lose SNAP coverage.

Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday said about 140,000 Pennsylvanians would lose access to SNAP under the federal proposal, and questioned whether Pennsylvania could continue the program at all if the bill passed.

If half the people currently receiving SNAP in the state lose it, that could result in 7,000 to 12,000 jobs lost in the grocery industry and farming.

“All that money is spent by people, it goes right into the grocery stores, which then goes to the farmers. So there’s a pretty significant multiplier effect,” Stier said.

In Philadelphia, nearly half a million people rely on SNAP benefits.

“Losing SNAP dollars would hit Pennsylvania’s farm families as well as the families of the 12,000 people working in the grocery industry whose jobs are directly supported by monthly SNAP spending,” Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said in a statement last month.

More people could also end up relying on food banks, which are themselves under-resourced, Julie Bancroft, CEO of Feeding Pennsylvania, has said.

Stier said he also wonders how many grocery stores that accept SNAP benefits could close in the future if customers lose assistance.

The proposed bill would cut billions of federal dollars from Medicaid and change eligibility rules. Adults in Pennsylvania who became eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are some of those who are most at risk of losing that coverage under the cuts, The Inquirer has reported.

Stier’s team estimates that if Pennsylvania had to give up the Medicaid expansion that resulted from the Affordable Care Act, it could cost up to 60,000 healthcare jobs.

Proposed Medicaid cuts would likely result in patients losing coverage, and would hurt hospitals financially. Not only those who rely on Medicaid would be impacted, Stier said.

“It may disrupt people’s ability to see doctors they’ve been going to who leave. It may increase wait times to see doctors and get appointments at hospitals,” he said. “We’re going to see a major contraction in the healthcare sector.”

Nearly one in four Pennsylvanians are enrolled in Medicaid. About 50% of patients at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia use Medicaid.

Pennsylvanians who got access to Medicaid through the program’s expansion number about 750,000, including low-wage workers whose jobs don’t provide health insurance. Some 310,000 people in the state could lose Medicaid coverage because of the cuts, Shapiro’s administration has said.

“When people do not have health insurance, they are forced to forego preventive care and rely on emergency care,” Secretary of Health Debra Bogen said in a statement this month. “This, in turn, leads not only to worse health outcomes, but also increases uncompensated healthcare services, increases insurance premiums, and increases healthcare costs for all Pennsylvanians — on top of contributing to overcrowded emergency rooms.”

» READ MORE: The ‘big, beautiful bill’ is poised to cut Medicaid. Here’s what’s at stake for five Philly-area families.

Shapiro has said the state would not be able to fill the financial gap left by federal cuts to SNAP and Medicaid.

“We don’t have the ability to make up the dollars that they’re taking away from Pennsylvania,” he said.

Pennsylvania could also lose thousands of jobs from the rollback of clean energy tax credits in the manufacturing sector. Pennsylvania would not be able to keep up with increased energy demand, executives in the industry have said.

Biden-era legislation including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the CHIPS and Science Act “sparked an unprecedented boom in public investment in clean energy and manufacturing,” Stephen Herzenberg, an economist and executive director of the Keystone Research Center, said during a June media call. That public investment has also led to private funds being put toward projects.

The “bad news,” Herzenberg said, “is that if you undermine the federal programs that are driving a much more rapid shift in the U.S. to a clean energy and manufacturing economy … you lose a lot of that job creation.”

Cutting clean energy programs and incentives for manufacturing and construction would cost over 26,400 Pennsylvania jobs in 2030 and nearly 30,000 in 2035, according to a June report from the Keystone Research Center.

Energy prices are already rising in the state, and costs for Pennsylvanians could go up more because of the cuts, Herzenberg said.

In Pennsylvania “the federal investments are really driving our strong economy with the best yet to come,” Herzenberg said. “Good union jobs and cheap renewable energy and lower energy costs for households — all of that is at risk.”

Stier is particularly concerned with cuts to research and development in technology and medicine.

“The research sector in Philadelphia is extraordinarily driven by healthcare research,” he said, pointing to the city’s research universities. “The cuts that will happen are going to hurt us.”

» READ MORE: Philadelphia bet its future on the ‘meds and eds’ now under attack by DOGE

Some have already been made through executive action, Stier said.

The University of Pennsylvania enacted a hiring freeze in March as it braced for Trump’s cuts.

“I don’t think people understand how much our way of life, our economy, our health, is based on the incredible expansion of knowledge in the last 100 years,” he said. “All the basic research that created the Internet and computers and transistors and circuit boards, it’s paid for by the federal government. Most of the medical research is paid for by the federal government.”

Cuts now would have a lasting impact, he said, even if spending resumes later.

“People plan this research out years in advance. If you stop it, if you have to close down a laboratory, you can’t snap your fingers and restart it,” Stier said.

Beyond Philadelphia, Stier is concerned about the impact of these cuts.

“You take the United States, with this immense wealth, out of the business of doing research and development in medical and nonmedical fields — nothing’s going to replace that,” he said.