A former federal worker leaves his jobs at the Department of Education, trailing boxes of his belongings in this March file photo. (Photo by Jess Daninhirsch/Capital News Service)
Maryland lost another 2,500 federal jobs in August, the second month in a row that the state has led the nation in federal job losses, according to numbers released Friday by the Maryland Department of Labor.
The August numbers brought the total number of federal jobs lost in the state to 15,100 since January, when President Donald Trump took office and began his campaign to slash the size of the federal workforce. That year-to-date total is also the most in the U.S., the state said.
Maryland’s economy is heavily dependent on the federal workforce: An estimated 269,000 Maryland residents were employed by the federal government in 2023, according to a report by the state’s Labor Department, and there were 158,475 federal jobs located in the state that year.
The August job numbers count jobs located in the state, which means Maryland has lost almost 10% of its federal jobs since the start of the year.
Jake Pannell, a national business representative for the National Federation of Federal Employees, said many former workers have had to leave the region, and he worries about the lack of private-sector jobs for the variety of skillsets federal workers have.
“Many of these people have decades of experience. They’re overqualified for other positions,” Pannell said, adding that some federal workers will either have to accept “huge” pay cuts or undergo job re-entry programs — training them for jobs “they’re already greatly experienced at.”
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And the federal job losses are only expected to continue when the September numbers come out. As part of the push to slash the federal workforce, federal employees were offered a deferred resignation option on Jan. 28 that would allow them to receive pay and benefits until Sept. 30.
“Workforce-wide” declines are expected to show up in the job losses at the end of September and through the end of the year as those jobs come off the books, according to a statement from the Office of Personnel Management.
Lawmakers this year created an emergency short-term loan program for laid-off federal workers, and the Labor Department has set up a page for former feds looking for work that includes a list of job recruiting events and career workshops.
“The states are doing everything they have the resources to do,” Pannell said. Many resources put forward by the state, such as unemployment insurance, are federally funded and are at risk of being cut, he added.
“Those resources aren’t going to be any better than they were before,” Pannell said.
The federal job cuts were the driving factor behind an overall loss of 3,200 jobs in Maryland for the month, which drove the state’s unemployment rate from 3.4% in July to 3.6% in August. Still, Maryland’s unemployment rate remained below the national average of 4.3% for the month.
The federal job cuts began on Trump’s first day back in office, when OPM issued a memo directing agencies to identify workers who were still in their probationary period, when it is easier for them to be fired. They continued in February, when Trump ordered reductions in force and agency reorganizations in line with recommendations of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE Service.
Since taking office, Trump has also unilaterally ended collective bargaining agreements with some federal labor unions and instituted a hiring freeze that has been extended through mid-October, among other actions. All told, about 97,000 federal jobs have been lost nationwide since January 2025, according to a Sept. 5 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“If you get rid of all these federal employees within the state of Maryland or in the D.C. metro area, where are they going to go? What are they going to do? Where are the jobs they could take?” Pannell asked.
