But the Department of Government Efficiency’s initiative still holds a silver lining for governors: an opportunity to recruit talent for their own states, many of which have thousands of public jobs vacant.
Hawaii
Hawaii’s Democratic governor has been critical of DOGE’s push to reduce the size of the government’s workforce. At the same time, Gov. Josh Green (D-HI) has capitalized on the moment to fill yawning gaps in his own state workforce.
“We have a total, huge vacancy problem,” the governor told Hawaii Pubic Radio in February. “Hawaii has 4,020 civil service vacancies and 1,005 executive branch vacancies. So we can hire a lot of people.”
In comments to the Washington Examiner, Green highlighted the initiatives Hawaii has rolled out to recruit fired federal employees.
“We have launched Operation Hire Hawaiʻi through our Department of Human Resources Development. It will fast-track qualified candidates into job opportunities throughout the state within 14 days, and applicants are being referred to hiring departments daily. We have had a couple well-attended hiring fairs, and more are coming in the next few weeks,” Green said.
Operation Hire Hawaii’i has been operating for roughly a month, pulling around 50 to 60 job listings at a time for the state to focus on expediting for hire within about 10 working days, Brenna Hashimoto, Hawaii’s Human Resources Department director, told the Washington Examiner.
“We’ve received almost 1,700 applications, which for Hawaii, is a tremendous response rate. We are seeing really healthy applicant pools, especially in things like information technology, I think over the various types of it, specialist positions that we’ve listed almost 300 applications, which is tremendous. It’s an area where we’ve got a lot of need across our state agencies, and so that’s really promising,” Hashimoto said.
She pointed to factors such as the state’s competitive wages and pension benefits as incentives to sign up for a state job. She also pointed to employee benefits, which she called “second to none,” including expansive sick leave policies, “great” health benefits, a robust number of state holidays, and flexible work schedules.
“We really care about our employees and taking care of them and making sure that they have work-life balance,” she said. “So we feel like we’re very competitive when it comes to employment benefits.”
“The silver lining,” Hashimoto commented of DOGE’s effort to reduce the federal workforce, “is that we hope to fill a lot of our jobs.”
“We have 4,000 vacancies. It’s a tremendous strain on our current workforce, and it means that we’re not able to fulfill some of our responsibility to our community, to our citizens, in providing government services efficiently and effectively. So to the extent that we can bring in more talent, these experienced individuals from the federal government, that’s extremely exciting to us,” she continued. “It’s attractive, and we’re eager to welcome them because we feel like they can make an immediate positive impact on our workplaces and alleviate some of the stress that vacancies cause for our current employees.”
New York
In an effort to recruit federal employees laid off by the Trump administration’s cuts, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) launched a “You’re Hired” initiative to hire workers fired by DOGE, created a job board advertising over 7,000 job openings in state government, and expanded a “New York Wants You” initiative with a billboard campaign in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station and New York’s Moynihan Station.
“The federal government might say, ‘You’re fired,’ but here in New York, we say, ‘You’re hired.’ In fact, we love federal workers,” Hochul said. “Whatever your skills, we value public service.”
A slew of other states have launched initiatives to attract these workers, but New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon told the Washington Examiner, “We did it first.”
“We are very excited to reach out and help these workers who have been displaced,” she said. “We value their service. We know that they’re highly skilled, and we want them here in New York.”
Reardon names a new program developed by New York’s Department of Civil Service that expedites the hiring of fired federal workers as the top factor that sets the Empire State’s recruitment effort apart from the rest of the country. The NY Hiring for Emergency Limited Placement Statewide program “removes all of the Civil Service testing barriers that you would have, and that is huge,” she said.
“It used to be that in order to get into civil service jobs in New York State, you had to take an exam, you had to wait for it to be held, and you had to wait for it to be scored,” Reardon said.
Under the HELPS program, “that’s gone,” she said.
Reardon also touted 96 career centers across New York, free webinars and workshops detailing career advice, and special treatment for veterans offered by the state as incentives for workers to make New York their new home and fill over 7,000 open civil service positions.
“We’ve also created a brochure to emphasize job opportunities, the kind of support that they can expect for impacted federal workers, and resources for job seekers within state government. As part of this effort, we at the New York State Department of Labor are hosting a series of informative webinars to help these impacted workers,” she said. “And these workshops are a real deep dive into what our resources are. That includes things like interview tips, resume writing assistance, and what it’s like working for New York State. And of course, all of this is offered at no cost.”
“We [also] have services in all the career centers that actually serve just veterans to put you in a priority situation in the career center. So be sure to use your veteran status as well to get you know, get another door open,” Reardon added.
Maryland
Under the leadership of Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), Maryland launched the Maryland Public Servants Resource Website for workers affected by federal workforce layoffs, which has seen roughly 84,500 visitors since the site’s launch. The state has also hosted a series of job fairs in partnership with counties and local leaders, as well as information sessions that have each been attended by hundreds of interested applicants, numbers much larger than the state typically sees. Moore has additionally directed his agencies to take action to improve state and local hiring practices to support the influx of federal workers potentially interested in filling Maryland state jobs and launched the Teach Maryland website to help fired workers transition to a teaching career in the state, which is struggling from a dearth of teachers.
“You mobilize and in Maryland, this is our moment to mobilize,” Moore said during a Feb. 28 press conference.
In comments to the Washington Examiner, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) touted Maryland’s effort to recruit civil servants for state jobs even as he slammed DOGE for laying off federal workers.
“Team Maryland stands with our dedicated federal civil servants – we value their skills, their patriotism, and their commitment to working on behalf of the American people,” the senator said. “While we fight to reverse Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s illegal and reprehensible attacks on them and the valuable public services they provide, we are also working to provide them with additional support, including resources and opportunities to put their talents to work for Maryland. That’s because in Maryland, we respect and appreciate all that public workers do to strengthen our communities.”
Dr. Joseph Kennedy, a political expert on federal bureaucracy at Georgia Southern University, suggested some of the state executives spearheading initiatives to recruit federal workers are angling to build a national profile ahead of potential future presidential bids.
“American politics has become nationalized,” he told the Washington Examiner. “To that extent. It doesn’t surprise me that especially Democratic governors would be, you know, because national politics, hearing so much of what’s going on in their states would be particularly focused on [recruiting fired federal employees].”
However, Dr. Paul Light, a professor emeritus and political expert at New York University, believes such an attempt could backfire. The general image is that government employees are overpaid, underworked, “not fully engaged, and maybe they’re slipping here and there,” he said.
“It’s not generally viewed as a big politics maker or big personnel maker. I mean, basically,d the general position is that hiring more people at the federal, state, and local level is not exactly the way to get elected,” he said. “Governors and others are very careful not to sort of spring out and say, ‘Oh, we’ve doubled the number of feds.’”
Moore, who has been rumored as a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination himself, most recently attended a hiring event in Frederick County that attracted more than 900 registrants.
In Maryland, as in other states, officials told the Washington Examiner that fears from fired federal workers that their skill set might not qualify them for open state jobs are largely groundless. The wide variety of open civil service positions, as well as resume workshops and other career help services offered by states, provide the support workers need to successfully transition from federal to state government, they said.
Virginia
Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched the Virginia Has Jobs program to help laid-off federal workers find roughly 4,500 open state jobs. Since then, the site has received over 120,000 visits.
“Virginia has jobs … but I particularly want our federal workers who are experiencing real anxiety and may experience job disruption to know that there is opportunity here,” Youngkin said during a Virginia Beach event last week. “Your skillset, your capabilities, are transferable to another career in the commonwealth of Virginia.”
Virginia ranks third in the country in terms of the number of government workers living there. With over 147,000 federal workers calling Virginia home and elections coming up in the state this fall, Youngkin has made it a priority to address concerns about DOGE’s initiative.
His Virginia Has Jobs program lies under the jurisdiction of Virginia Works, the Commonwealth’s agency for workforce development, and offers workers the opportunity to scrutinize a total of roughly 250,000 private sector and civil service jobs.
“Virginia was named America’s Top State for Business by CNBC, and we know employers need skilled talent as they grow,” Nicole Overley, the commissioner for Virginia Works, told the Washington Examiner. “This initiative to connect talent with employers had been in the works starting last fall, but has been particularly timely given the ways in which it can support Virginia’s Federal workers’ career transitions. In these ways, it’s unique from other states in that our goal is to get the word out to every Virginian, including Federal workers who are looking to transfer their valued skills to a new role…”
Virginia is also running hiring events to attract workers, including newly fired federal employees.
“In our last event two weeks ago, we had over 5,700 people join, over 300 employers with 11,500 openings, and 13,000 applications submitted for those openings in the 5 hour period that the event was open,” Overley said, noting that the “record-breaking” numbers included 14% of attendees that self-identified as recently impacted federal workers.
Overley announced to the Washington Examiner that the state will be holding a virtual hiring event focused on the Hampton Roads area on March 25.
WHAT IS DOGE? WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY
2025 isn’t the first time federal workers have been shuffled around the country.
During Trump’s first term, he moved hundreds of jobs with two federal research agencies out of D.C., leading many workers who were unwilling to make the location change to quit their jobs. The Bureau of Land Management headquarters moved from D.C. to Grand Junction, CO, while some Department of Agriculture jobs moved to the Kansas City area. Supporters of the changes said both moves put employees closer to the areas they were overseeing. Critics said it created chaos and pushed civil servants out of their jobs.
