John Burg applied for his 600th job before he stopped keeping track. The former USAID contractor, laid off in January 2025 after decades working in Thailand, Kosovo and El Salvador, now climbs ladders in his Takoma Park, Maryland neighborhood changing lightbulbs and renovating porches. He makes 15% of what he earned in federal service.
Burg is one of more than 300,000 federal workers and contractors swept out in the Department of Government Efficiency purge. A year later, the job market has delivered a harsh verdict: most haven't recovered.
"I feel more connected to my local community than ever. More disconnected from my financial goals," Burg said, taking a break from installing paneling.
Support organizations tracking the fallout paint a bleak picture. WellFed, which helps displaced federal workers, estimates only 25% of its members have found new jobs. OneAID, representing former USAID staff, says at least 50% of its members remain unemployed. Among the 13 former federal workers NBC News interviewed, seven were jobless, two were underemployed, two had cobbled together side work, and four had relocated to find employment.
The Washington region, where nearly 10% of the workforce depends directly or indirectly on federal employment, absorbed the shock hardest. The skills that earned loyalty and advancement in government don't always translate to private industry. "We just aren't creating enough jobs as a nation, and certainly in the larger D.C. metro region, to absorb that workforce," said Catherine Baker, managing director at OneAID and herself a former USAID partner employee.
David Harbourt, who led safety operations for the FDA's veterinary division, now drives to Kansas two weeks each month for consulting work. His wife, left juggling full-time employment and two children, bears the weight of household logistics alone. The family spends half of each month separated.
"There's a stigma being a former fed," Harbourt said. "And that affects your marketability."
Others describe the emotional toll as crushing. Bree Danner learned she'd been terminated from the CDC while traveling to her grandmother's deathbed in January 2025, just six months after finally securing a permanent position in overdose prevention. Nine years at the agency ended as a probationary employee.
"It damaged my feelings of self-worth as a professional," Danner said. She has since spent seven months as a foster parent in Atlanta, burning through savings and accumulating credit card debt. The loss of mission-driven work left a void that unemployment benefits couldn't fill.
Rebecca Ferguson-Ondrey, WellFed co-founder and a former employee at the Administration for Children and Families, observed a pattern emerging. "Laid-off workers are now moving into a category that is long-term unemployment. The unemployment checks have stopped. They're having trouble with health care."
Healthcare access became an immediate crisis for some. Becky, a single parent who lost her job at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, waited four months for confirmation of continued coverage. During that gap, she skipped doctor visits, her flu shot, and her A1C checks despite being diabetic, purchasing expensive ACA coverage for one month instead. She was later billed for months of insurance she didn't authorize.
The financial pressure forced relocation. Becky moved back to Kentucky, where living costs are lower but opportunity scarcer. Her neighbors, largely supportive of federal cuts, repeat the familiar refrain that government workers are lazy and inefficient.
"The opposite is true," Becky said. "I've had a couple people say, 'Well, it needed to happen.' Well, did it? It hasn't made the government more efficient. It hasn't saved the government money."
Mental health has become a common casualty. Burg, hammering away on his porch job, acknowledged the psychological weight. "Depression is something that is a constant thing to avoid or do battle with. You really have to stay focused and just get work done." For him, physical labor provides brief respite from the larger reality: a one-time federal career displaced and unlikely to return.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "A year of spreadsheets and rejections exposes what the architects of DOGE either didn't calculate or didn't care about: the human cost of mass layoffs hits hardest in the places that built careers on answering the call to public service."
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