In his first two weeks in office, President Trump has taken several steps to significantly reduce the federal workforce and budget. These include issuing a series of day-one executive orders, firing scores of federal employees, and offering nearly 2 million government workers a buyout to resign before February 6.
A new brief by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law finds as many as 314,000 LGBTQ employees of the federal government, federal contractors, and the United States Postal Service (USPS) could be impacted by these cuts.
Among LGBTQ employees, a reduction in the federal workforce will disproportionately impact LBTQ women, younger LGBTQ people, and those with a college degree.
The president’s executive orders aim to reduce the federal workforce and budget by creating the Department of Government Efficiency, implementing a hiring freeze, establishing a Federal Hiring Plan, making certain classes of federal employees easier to terminate, requiring a return to in-person work, and eliminating DEI-related positions and programs.
The federal government has the 15th largest workforce of any employer in the United States. It has a larger workforce than the total number of people employed in over half of states.
Six agencies employ two-thirds of all federal workers: Veterans Affairs (21%), Homeland Security (10%), Army (10%), Navy (10%), Air Force (7%), and Department of Defense (7%). The percentage of LGBTQ employees at these agencies ranges from 4% to 9%. Federal employees are concentrated in states with some of the highest unemployment rates, like Washington D.C., California, Washington, and New York, and states that lack laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky.
“If fully executed, the proposed cuts will be a shock to overall employment in the United States, including for LGBTQ people. Over one in ten LGBTQ adults in the workforce are employed in the public sector, and nearly half of them are people of color,” said study author Brad Sears, Distinguished Senior Scholar of Law and Policy at the Williams Institute. “A reduction in federal workers will mean the loss of good jobs for members of LGBTQ communities who already face additional challenges in the workforce because of their multiple marginalized identities.”