Pennsylvania lost more federal workers than other states last month
Amid the shakeup of the federal workforce, government employees are leaving their jobs in larger numbers in Pennsylvania.
While state employment numbers have yet to see the full impact of President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce, new data released Friday show a greater impact on Pennsylvania than the national average, for a second consecutive month.
Pennsylvania’s federal workforce shrunk by 400 from February to March, according to preliminary data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
That left the state with 103,200 federal workers, a decline of 0.4%. Across the United States, the federal workforce shrunk by 0.1%.
The data are likely an undercount of the true impact of federal cuts. Workers on administrative leave — who are no longer working but continue to receive pay — would still appear as employed in the data released on Friday.
And federal agencies have said they plan to fire more workers in the coming months.
Still, the data reflecting payrolls as of March 12 offer a glimpse into the early impacts of Trump’s efforts to severely shrink the federal workforce.
In recent weeks, thousands of federal workers across the country were put on leave or terminated. Others took resignation offers, as the Trump administration encouraged workers to jump to the private sector in “higher productivity” jobs.
To date, it has been difficult to understand the scope of the workforce shake-up as some workers who were originally laid off were later reinstated but placed on leave following legal battles.
“It’s very chaotic. It’s very hard to track. For the union, it’s really hard to track people coming and going,” Philip Glover, national vice president of AFGE District 3, which represents roughly 9,400 federal workers in and near Philadelphia, said in March.
The BLS data does not break down federal employment losses by agency or department.
In Pennsylvania, the largest share of federal workers — nearly 30% — was employed at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as of last year. The department announced last month plans to fire up to 80,000 VA workers across the U.S.
Nationally, employment in the federal workforce declined by 4,000 last month.
Pennsylvania lost about 0.7% of its federal workers in February as compared with a nationwide decline of 0.4%. (Both Pennsylvania and the nation saw a 0.1% increase in federal employment in January.)
Pennsylvania employment across all sectors was up 0.3% month-over-month and up 1.4% from a year ago.