by Sarah Lyons, Public Assets
More than 3,000 Vermonters are caught in the on-again, off-again firings and layoffs of federal employees by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It is challenging to keep track of who has a job and who doesn’t, or even of which departments still exist.
During the first two months of Trump’s second term, DOGE ordered mass layoffs of federal agency employees. Federal judges reinstated the workers in 19 agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and temporarily paused firings. But uncertainty remains as to whether the reinstatements will hold and how long the pause will last—if, that is, the administration complies with the court orders.
According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees the federal workforce, there are over 3,000 federal employees based in Vermont. Of these, roughly 80 percent are at least temporarily protected under the recent court orders; more than 500 Vermonters work for agencies that did not receive protections. The largest federal employers in Vermont are the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Agriculture. These three agencies account for nearly three-quarters of the state’s federal workers and are all protected under the recent court orders.
Notably, the OPM data are not comprehensive. They do not count workers from several federal agencies or departments, including Vermont’s nearly 1,500 postal workers, nor do they count agencies with fewer than four Vermont-based employees.
Vermont’s unemployment rate rose to 2.6 percent in January
Vermont’s average annual unemployment rate increased to 2.3 percent in 2024, from 1.9 percent the previous year. Despite the rise, Vermont continued to boast the second-lowest unemployment rate in the country. Last year, the state saw its third-lowest annual unemployment rate since the data were first collected in 1976.
March 19, 2025. Montpelier. https://publicassets.org/
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