That’s the theory, at least, and it’s all playing out as President Donald Trump's administration continues to shed thousands of federal workers due to Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cost cutting.
Signs have emerged that those workers have set their sights on jobs with lower-level agencies, many of which are desperate to have more professional expertise among their ranks.
New York state, for instance, has received more than 1,300 applications in the first three weeks of the “You’re Hired” campaign, designed to recruit former federal workers into state service, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Labor told Government Technology. State officials have conducted more than 100 interviews during that time and have made at least 28 hires.
The department also reports 1 million new visitors to the state’s job website.
New York stands as an example of a state-level recruiter of federal workforce talent in this time of DOGE. About 116,000 federal workers call New York home.
The state is using digital billboards, brochures, webinars and job search assistance to attract those public-sector veterans as New York seeks to fill more than 7,000 state job openings in such areas as transportation, health care and technology. The state has particular need for attorneys, engineers, nurses and IT specialists, according to the Department of Labor.
It's not just New York.
States such as Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Mexico and Virginia are trying to hire federal workers as DOGE continues its work — on Friday, for instance, reports indicated that technology professionals from the U.S. Social Security Administration might lose their jobs.
The District of Columbia — which along with California, Texas, Maryland and Virginia has the most federal employees — has created a Public Service Career Hub to help guide the newly unemployed toward other public-sector work.
The federal government has said it is cutting more than 216,000 jobs, according to another report, a figure that accounts for 80 percent of recent layoffs in the U.S.
The federal government employed about 3 million people at the end of 2024, down from 3.4 million in 1990. The Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security were the largest sources of jobs.
“This moment presents a huge opportunity for cities and states across the country to capture incredible talent exiting federal service,” Caitlin Lewis, executive director of Work for America, told Government Technology. “Our goal is to keep great public servants in public service, and we're working overtime to make high-impact matches.”
The nonprofit operation launched late 2024 as a platform to help 4,000 political appointees and thousands of campaign staffers seeking fresh roles in public service — a need underscored by Trump’s preference to make civil services job holders easier to fire.
Now Work for America is also helping former federal workers who lost their jobs due to cost-cutting find employment with state and local governments.
As of Friday, the nonprofit operation had more than 6,300 candidates on its platform, 73 percent of whom are civil servants or federal contractors. They come from all 50 states, according to Lewis, and 47 percent of them have at least a decade’s worth of experience.
“We have a single mother of four who is a retired army solider, a USAID employee who was laid off just days after returning from maternity leave, and a disabled veteran who relocated to D.C. for a stable government job, only to be immediately laid off,” she said via email. “All of them were in their dream job, and all of them want to continue serving at the state and local level.”
Lewis said the group is hiring for more than 500 jobs in 47 states and cities.
“As our candidate pool grows and our list of government partners grows, we are able to make incredible matches across the board,” she said.
That is probably easier said than done in many cases.
For one thing, not all skills gained at the federal level translate easily into state and local public-sector jobs. A great example of that comes from the Kansas City area, where some 1,000 Internal Revenue Service workers have lost their jobs.
While some areas can absorb some tax workers — New York has hired 19 former IRS workers whom Trump and DOGE laid off — it’s unlikely that all those former federal workers will find similar positions elsewhere, Michael Bartlett, program director for postsecondary and workforce success at the National League of Cities (NLC), told Government Technology.
“It’s an occupation mismatch in some cases,” he said.
Workforce shortages for state and local governments stretch back years, before the pandemic, which led to even more unfilled positions at those non-federal public agencies, he said.
Even now, state and local governments face various labor shortages, not the least of which are in IT. Relatively low pay and lengthy hiring processes deter some applications, according to experts, leaving positions unfilled.
As well, federal layoffs are not evenly distributed, Bartlett said, making it difficult for some local governments, many of these desperate for fresh talent, to put forth meaningful hiring efforts. That might mean that small and rural areas will miss out on this wave of federal expertise coming into the labor pool, at least when compared with larger cities such as Los Angeles and New York.
Law enforcement also faces sustained hiring and retention problems, driven in part by political controversy around policing and, again, relatively low pay for many of those highly stressful and dangerous jobs. The sudden surge in federal talent doesn’t seem likely to do much for local law enforcement.
“Public safety is a big need, but it doesn’t really match up,” Bartlett said.
Even so, he shares some of the optimism expressed by others that local and state governments can benefit from the DOGE cuts, and that’s why the NLC is putting on its own related webinar and partnering with Work for America — efforts that predate the presidential election but which have taken on urgency in the past few weeks.
The new influx of potential workers might not solve the long-standing labor problems of cities, but the labor situation will almost certainly work to the advantage of some cities and even small communities, he said.
“This has been a long time coming,” he added.
