As of March 6, 2025, Washington was home to about a thousand laid-off federal employees — twice as many as last year, according to the state Employment Security Department.
But more workers are expected to be cut after yesterday’s deadline for agencies to come up with workforce reduction plans. It's part of the Trump administrations efforts to slash federal spending and massively reduce the federal workforce.
"About half of the National Weather Service offices were already understaffed," U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said. "And then came this hiring freeze, and then came the massive firings, and that was just round one.”
On a call with reporters Thursday, Murray highlighted the dire effects this could have on the services provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the NWS. She was joined by a former NOAA administrator and three former NOAA employees from Washington.
"Musk and Trump have already fired 650 NOAA workers — including dozens of people right here in Washington state — with no rhyme or reason, with no clue or concern how it will seriously harm our economy and our communities," Murray said. "And now we are hearing that NOAA intends to lay off another 10% of its workforce — that is more than a thousand critical jobs Trump and Elon are putting on the chopping block.”
"You can expect things like the following: Degraded or eliminated forecasts for everything from extreme weather watches and warnings to seasonal outlooks of drought and flood to tsunami warnings and space weather induced power outages and GPS failures," former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said during the call.
In response to the mass layoffs, Washington state’s Employment Security Department is planning webinars to help the recently fired workers get back on their feet.
Donna Mack, ESD's Rapid Response manager, said usually the response would go agency by agency to offer resources to specific groups of workers.
But since it’s unclear where exactly workers are being laid off, the department is offering free webinars to all federal workers in the state who’ve been subject to job cuts.
In an interview with SPR News, Mack said the presentations will be some first steps toward getting affected workers back on their feet.
"For folks who've been out of the job market for quite a while, how you do a resume, how you interview, the kinds of questions you might expect in an interview might look really different than they did 10 years ago,” she said.
The webinars will also cover topics like applying for federal unemployment insurance and skills training opportunities from area schools.
"The way that federal unemployment insurance is done is a little different than for workers who are not federal workers," Mack explained. "So we want them to attend these events so that they get the information that is specifically geared to their particular situation."
Mack said these are just a starting point, since many fired workers aren’t in an emotional state to jump into the job search or start applying for federal unemployment.
"It's people who are pretty shocked, right? It's sudden, they didn't expect it. And so there's, it takes a while to be able to take in information. So these rapid response events are step one," she told SPR News.
"There's a lot of open arms waiting to help them."
