When Howard County, Md., held a public forum for federal employees on Feb. 4, County Executive Calvin Ball was expecting that maybe 50 or 100 people might show up to look for resources or job leads. Instead, 400 people came. Later in the month, when the county hosted a career fair targeted at federal workers, offering headshots and networking with various employers, 600 people attended.

Howard County sits between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in one of the densest pockets of federal workers in the country. Its largest employer is the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which receives billions of dollars in defense contracts. In the last two decades, county businesses received some 38,000 defense contracts worth $33 billion, according to Ball.

The cuts that the Department of Government Efficiency has imposed so far, often targeting probationary employees who are in the early months of a new position, have stripped some people of their livelihoods and others of their colleagues and sense of security, Ball says. Other workers say they’ve been suddenly promoted because their supervisors were fired.

Even people who don’t work directly for the federal government or its contractors are bracing for the downstream effects of federal cuts. “There’s a great deal of confusion, turmoil and anxiety,” Ball says.

In the last few weeks, localities and states have started launching targeted efforts to connect fired federal workers with jobs and other assistance. Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a “Virginia Has Jobs” campaign with a package of resources tailored specifically to federal workers affected by the DOGE cuts. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul launched a campaign to help federal workers find jobs with the state government.

Counties with lots of federal workers around D.C. are developing programs for them. And places far from the capital are starting to think about the combined impact of federal workforce cuts and potential cuts to social services being debated in Congress.

Around the Country

In Atlanta, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a large Veterans Affairs hospital are major employers, the City Council recently passed a resolution “urging state and local governments to expedite hiring procedures to absorb talented federal employees impacted by recent layoffs.” Reports suggest that the CDC was forced to cut around 700 employees, while the Department of Veterans Affairs has cut about 1,000 workers around the country, though many of the figures are unconfirmed.

City officials are worried about the impact of both workforce cuts and potential federal spending cuts on local services. “It’s going to be asked of our city to shoulder more of the burden,” says Jason Dozier, an Atlanta City Council member who sponsored the resolution. “The moment that we’re in these last few weeks shows how important it is for localities to really step up and do more.”

In Montgomery County, Md., the federal government employs more than 10 percent of the local workforce. Marc Elrich, the county executive, said during a media briefing last week that the county had received notification of more than 1,000 federal layoffs so far.

He noted that in a region where federal work is a pillar of the economy, cuts like those have secondary effects as well. “When you lose federal jobs in many of these agencies, you lose jobs in the supporting industries, many of which are in the county, D.C., and Northern Virginia,” he said. “Cuts to the federal government mean cuts to the private sector.”

Looking for Ways to Help

Montgomery County is holding a series of community meetings to help federal workers who have been laid off. Elrich said that affected workers could call 311 for support. The county is working to connect people with new job opportunities, although Elrich said that “the need is far greater than the number of jobs that are available.” He noted that Maryland is working to staff up its unemployment office as well.

Officials worry the economic impact of federal cuts in the D.C. region could be vast. More than 80,000 people in Fairfax County, Va., are employed directly by the federal government, according to Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. That’s out of a total county workforce of about 650,000 people.

The authority has tasked an economist with sorting out the potential impact of the DOGE cuts, Hoskins says — though it’s been difficult to sort out exactly how many jobs have been lost, with some workers being dismissed and then asked to return.

In the meantime, his agency is working to connect former federal workers with some of the more than 80,000 job openings in Northern Virginia. That involves helping public-sector workers get accustomed to private-sector work and rituals.

For example, Hoskins says, military workers with experience operating heavy machinery may want to update the language on their resumes to reflect experience with things like “just-in-time logistics.”

The cuts at the federal level have also changed the role of the economic development authority, which typically spends lots of its focus helping private businesses find real estate in Fairfax County. “It kind of reminds me a little bit of COVID, which was a sudden impact and then you have to respond and pivot,” Hoskins says.

Don’t Touch Defense

In the face of mixed messages from DOGE, Congress and the administrators of federal agencies, many local officials are still waiting to see how extensive the federal job cuts will be. Oklahoma City is home to Tinker Air Force Base, where rumors of hundreds of potential layoffs have made news headlines in recent weeks. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also operates a large training facility there. Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a plan to “supercharge” the hiring of air traffic controllers who train in Oklahoma City, in the face of recent aviation incidents, including a deadly collision between a commercial airliner and a military helicopter in Washington, D.C., in January.

David Holt, Oklahoma City’s Republican mayor, says unemployment is currently low in the city, and he’s not too concerned about federal workforce cuts. Anyone in Oklahoma City who loses their job should be able to find another one fairly quickly, he suggests.

Moreover, the two government sectors with the biggest presence in the city, the military and the FAA, represent what he considers to be “critically important services offered by our federal government.”

“I think we’ve got bigger problems as a nation if any administration is making severe cuts to defense and flight safety,” Holt says.