What effect (if any) have all these government layoffs had on the real estate market in the D.C. area (including northern VA & southern MD). Have the government layoffs had secondary effects, such as retail stores, etc.
It’s still to early to tell since there haven’t been many actual layoffs or terminations yet, mostly threats so far that are being challenged in court. That and its winter now, the home market generally cools down in the winter and gets back up in the springtime as peoples kids finish up the school year.
The layoffs in DC haven’t really happened yet, except in small numbers (AIUI, most of the laid-off USAID workers resided elsewhere). Although larger layoffs are in the news (e.g. all of the probationary layoffs that were ordered this week), those mostly haven’t yet taken place - and when they do, they are likely to face legal challenges that focus on the the failure of the government to adhere to legal requirements (e.g. identification of specific performance deficiencies in , and it’s likely that many of them will be reversed. The same will be true for formal Reductions In Force (RIFs) that the the administration wants to use to thin the ranks of non-probationary employees. RIFs are rare precisely because there are a lot of pain-in-the-ass rules that need to be followed during implementation. You can’t just fire whole groups or departments, or all employees with less than X years on the job - for example, you’re supposed to identify skill redundancies (e.g. three employees with the same skillset when there’s only enough of that kind of work for one employee), and it eventually comes down to scrutinizing individual employee qualifications, histories, and departmental work requirements before making those decisions.
As with the layoffs of probationary employees, it’s a certainty that legal challenges will be mounted if the rules governing RIFs aren’t fully adhered to. It’s likely to be some time before you see people migrating out of DC in large numbers.
It is probably too early to tell, but while most government departments and agencies have their headquarters in and around Washington D.C., government employees work and live across the nation. For instance, most of the more than 216k ‘probationary employees’ (those with less than a year or two of service) were terminated under direction of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), most are not in DC but instead work in field offices and work sites around the nation or abroad. While these are generally the lowest earning employees at the beginning of their careers, veterans transitioning from military to civil service, or mid-career workers bringing specific expertise to government, the effect of dumping do many people at once (many of the civil service oriented employees dumped into an already lousy corporate employment market) will have economic impacts.
Stranger
Will all these actions move the needle on the unemployment numbers? That is usually an indicator of the economic health of the country. It’s currently around 4%, but if that spikes because of all these layoffs wont that, ya know, look bad for the new administration? Or, is the plan to just swap-in thousands of worthless, expendable and unemployed loyalists (such as the pardoned J6 rioters), as per Project 2025, to these jobs and cancel-out the effect of firing all the “deep state” people?
Indeed, only about 15% of the federal civilian workforce lives in the Greater DC metropolitan area. Some Republicans have begun to sotto voce comment on how these indiscriminate layoffs may actually impact their states/districts, but don’t expect any real resistance.
With the stranglehold they currently have on social media and much of conventional media? Most people will just hear that the true unemployment number previously was at least 15%, and now it’s virtually 0%. But if you’re mad about not having a job, there’s this black / trans / woman who is doing a job that should be for real americans, like you.
The vast majority of federal employees are not in Washington, DC. They are all over the country.
Thousands of federal employees are being laid off as I write this. It’s occurring on this holiday weekend. There is a “management” deadline for the current wave of terminations to be completed by end of business on Monday, a federal holiday.
The federal firings began this week. Many feds are fired in their offices, told to pick up their belongings and leave immediately. Feds have been fired over the phone.
All too often, the legally required procedures to terminate are not occurring. Written orders to terminate are not provided to feds before the fact, if at all. Required time periods between notice to terminate and actual termination are not occurring. Feds with performance awards and documented exemplary performance are being fired and their termination paperwork says they are being fired for cause, when that cause does not exist.
Feds are being ordered to come into the office this weekend so they can be fired in person. There are scattered reports within my agency that remote workers, who have no government office, are being visited by federal law enforcement officers at their homes to be fired and their government equipment (computer, etc. ) removed.
Yes, there are lawsuits filed to stop all of this. The lawsuits will take time . Time these feds do not have. I personally know of federal employees who are veterans, and in one case a disabled vet, being immediately terminated, and have to put their house on the market right away because they need money just to live.
Ahh. You’re right - that is a much easier solution than what I was thinking.
This is by design, I think, as part of the whole “flood the zone” strategy. By the time anything comes to a court, even if within the next few days, the damage being done is already set, so nothing can come of any legal challenges.
Are they not allowed to file unemployment? I would think that a massive jump in state unemployment numbers would cause a lot of teeth grinding by red state officials…
Unemployment rules vary by state.
[Moderating]
There are no factual answers to this question. Off to IMHO.
I know it varies by state, I was just curious if there is a law or regulations that says that they are excluded from unemployment benefits… like the law that says that government employees cannot strike.
Stranger
Usually it’s if you’re fired for cause you won’t get it but if you’re laid off, you will.
Private businesses pay into a state’s unemployment compensation fund; does the US gubmint also pay into the various states UC pools?
Generally speaking, being fired for cause can be a factor in being denied unemployment benefits. In the case of probationary employees being separated right now, supervisors have been ordered to fire for cause, regardless of whether the cause actually exists.
I have actual documentation from probationary employees. They supplied me with their most recent performance statements, signed by their supervisors, where their performance showed no negatives, but in many cases, received performance awards. Yet the documentation they were presented when they were fired this weekend says their termination was for cause.
I’m not sure how the current round of layoffs would affect eligibility for unemployment benefits, but I can offer one bit of “data”. Years ago when I was a federal worker there was a time when Congress couldn’t get a budget passed and we were laid off until they could get their act together. I was given instructions on how to apply for unemployment benefits in case the situation took long enough that I would qualify, which in Illinois at the time was 2 weeks. As it turned out, I was back at work within a week, so my application was denied.
Many of these government employees are being fired “for cause” even though this is a broad wave of firings without individual performance assessments. What is mot generally appreciated is how many of these employees are engaged in work to disperse monies allocated to various purposes and recipients, and even absent of the courts explicitly accepting the rational behind ‘impoundment’ of Congressionally-allocated funds by the executive will effectively put a stranglehold on government supported work including infrastructure maintenance, veteran and disability benefits, scientific and medical research, education, agricultural subsidies, et cetera. Which means many of the people working in these areas or dependent upon these funds will also become unemployed or without means of support, magnifying the impact of these firings manyfold.
Stranger
I wonder if, given the circumstances, some states will loosen the rules a little to provide unemployment benefits to some of these federal workers, regardless of the “cause”?
I would expect red states whose state officials align with Trump will not loosen the rules. It’s dangerous to assume mean people can ever be human and decent.