Pennsylvania’s federal workforce was already shrinking before the Trump administration began massive layoffs

Pennsylvania lost 700 federal workers between January and February, marking the largest month-over-month decline in federal employment since November 2020, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The data, reflecting payrolls as of Feb. 12, offers the first glimpse into what Pennsylvania’s federal workforce looked like just before President Donald Trump’s administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk, began the bulk of their mass federal layoffs, leaving many employees confused and anxious about their job security.

In February, federal agencies in Pennsylvania employed 103,600 workers, down 0.7% from 104,300 in January. The figure represents a modest decline of 0.3% from the same period a year ago, according to the BLS data.

This decline in Pennsylvania’s federal workforce could reflect the employees who decided to take the federal government’s “Fork in the Road” offer — known as a “deferred resignation program” that allowed workers to resign with eight months’ pay — or those who may have been spooked by the offer and decided to preemptively quit their government jobs, said Josh Mask, an economics professor at Temple University. Natural attrition, exacerbated by Trump’s day-one executive order instituting a government hiring freeze may also be to blame, Mask said.

» READ MORE: Federal layoffs hit Philadelphia. Here’s what happened next for workers.

Statewide, Pennsylvania’s 103,600 federal workers make up about 1.7% of the total workforce, according to the data. The U.S. Postal Service constitutes the largest share of federal workers in Pennsylvania, with more than 28,000 employees as of September 2024, according to a separate set of BLS data.

The recent layoffs have sprawled across the federal workforce in Philadelphia in agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Federal workers make up a relatively high proportion of the city’s workforce. As of September, Philadelphia had 30,765 federal employees, constituting 4.3% of its 718,649 total workers — the fourth-largest share, proportionally, in counties throughout the state.

“I think if the federal government is cutting the federal workforce, this is going to be definitely one of the parts of the country that’s going to be most affected,” said Mask, while noting that many of the DOGE-driven layoffs are being contested in court and might not hold.

As of September, the federal government was the second-largest employer in Philadelphia and the agencies employing the most federal workers in the city were the Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, and the Postal Service.

When Trump signed an executive order instituting a government hiring freeze, union leaders representing federal employees in Philadelphia were wary of the order’s potential to be detrimental to the city’s already stretched-thin federal workforce.

Then came the “Fork in the Road,” and a judge extended the deadline for employees to decide whether to take the offer to the evening of Feb. 12.

» READ MORE: As Trump moves to end union representation for federal workers, thousands in Pa. and N.J. could be affected

Afterward came a deluge of mass layoffs mainly targeting probationary workers — typically individuals who are within the first year of their new job or promotion — across Philadelphia agencies. A judge in San Francisco ordered thousands of fired probationary officers to be reinstated, but Trump asked the Supreme Court Monday to block the judge’s ruling.

It remains to be seen what impacts DOGE’s cuts will have on the region’s federal workforce long-term. The number of federal employees in the Philadelphia metro area has been on a long-term decline since at least 1990, the first year for which data is available.

Mask, the Temple economics professor, surmises DOGE’s cuts to grants and contracts to Philadelphia’s educational and medical institutions could have a far greater negative impact on the region’s economy, and could eventually lead to employees at those institutions being laid off.

“Philadelphia has a lot of different medical systems that rely on NIH funding, services through HHS, Medicaid, Medicare,” Mask said. “So to the extent that you see cuts in those programs, I think, downstream, you’re going to see, eventually, cuts across a lot of our medical systems.”

The Trump administration has made these layoffs in the name of cutting government spending. Philadelphia-based federal agencies paid total wages of $827,370,263 in the third quarter of 2024.

Federal employee wages make up a small portion of the government’s total budget, said Max Stier, founding president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that aims to foster an improved federal government.

» READ MORE: Hundreds of former federal workers have applied for Pennsylvania state government jobs amid DOGE layoffs

“You’re looking at somewhere around the neighborhood of 4% of the total budget,” Stier said of all federal workers’ wages, noting that public servants are typically paid less than employees who work in the private sector, where DOGE has encouraged government workers to apply.

“It’s quite small, and certainly not a place where you’re going to save a lot of money,” Stier said. “More specifically, the activities, the cutting that DOGE has done is actually creating costs, not saving money.”

But the impact of the recent cuts could extend into the future, Stier said, adding that he is concerned about the effect they will have on recruiting new workers for federal jobs, once reputed for their stability and security.

“This is arson rather than renovation,” he said.