Gov. Josh Shapiro's executive order to attract fired federal workers appears to be working, state officials say. The state's human-resources office says that as of the middle of the week, 700 laid-off federal employees applied for some 1,200 state jobs.
Shapiro began an outreach program to federal workers after the Trump administration, headed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), cut thousands of government jobs nationwide. In response, Pennsylvania created a new landing page for its nearly 5,600 open vacancies, comparing state job classifications to their federal equivalents. State rapid response teams are helping federal workers look for new jobs by offering workshops on compiling resumes, applying for benefits, and applying for new jobs.
“They've been very helpful to us and we are following up with [workers],” said Philip Glover, head of the local American Federation of Government Employees, District 3.
And at a time when some employees have received termination letters that cited “poor performance” – a label some worry will harm future prospects – Glover said it helps to know the state has their backs.
Still, the cost of Trump’s actions is already being felt. AFGE says more than 500 of its members in Pennsylvania and Delaware alone have applied for unemployment benefits so far.
“[The Trump administration is] making decisions based on … whoever's involved with this DOGE group that Musk is running, and they don't understand the agencies at all,” he said. “None of them [in DOGE] have worked in government.”
“I think damage has kind of been done for a lot of people,” Meghan Schwob, a former U.S. Forest Service trail crew leader, told WESA. “It's been a couple of weeks now where people have really had to find new jobs and start new lives, because we can't keep waiting for things to change.”
Like Shapiro, governors in Minnesota, New York, Maryland and New Mexico have announced campaigns to hire fired federal workers. On new job applications for positions, the state now allows prospective hires to self-disclose if they were recently fired from federal employment. Pennsylvania is home to some 104,000 federal workers, according to the Shapiro administration.
The differences in state and federal job benefits are comparable, but federal positions usually have a higher starting salary, said Glover, who worked for the federal Bureau of Prisons for 25 years. But he said many employees have been reluctant to complain, or even identify themselves as former federal employees.
“We had people invited [by Congresspeople] to the State of the Union that got scared at the last minute and wouldn't go cause they didn't want to be identified on TV,” Glover said. “They didn't want to have MAGA’s wrath, basically. … They just didn't want to go through that.”
The state Office of Administration said it will continue to update its schedule of recruitment events online.
