Red states bleeding jobs thanks to Trump executive order

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a meeting with players of the Juventus soccer team in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump’s massive government cuts have already aroused controversy, from a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee allegedly planning on selling sensitive Social Security data to a private company, to impacting how small towns could celebrate America's 250th anniversary.

Now a new report reveals that Trump’s cuts have led to thousands upon thousands of layoffs — more than 377,000 federal employees in total — that impact his own voters.

For 10 states “most of which voted for Trump in 2024 and half with sizable rural populations, the federal workforce was slashed by 25 percent or more,” reported NBC News' Ashley Mowreader on Tuesday.

Mowreader added, “Across all departments, close to half of federal job cuts from June 2025 to January 2026 impacted more staff in states with a larger-than-average share of rural residents.”

Pointing to how the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, took charge of DOGE and began cutting government programs, Mowreader reported that “the Small Business Administration’s head count from 2024 to 2026 declined by 2,500, and USAID shed all but 200 of its nearly 3,300 employees, according to employment data from the OPM. The OPM’s figures show total change in employment and do not specify layoffs and hirings, while the GAO’s report does.”

While the greatest share of laid off employees came from Hawaii, a blue state, a lot of red states were heavily impacted including Alabama and Utah.

“Reductions elsewhere, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Interior and Treasury departments, also added up,” Mowreader wrote. “Utah, for example, saw a net loss of 18 [percent] of Treasury staff from 2024 to this year, accounting for about 1,500 personnel, many of whom worked for the Internal Revenue Service.”

For a large percentage of the people laid off, it has been very difficult for them to find new work.

“Many federal workers have struggled to find new work after being laid off, in part due to a difficult job market, but also because of the often unique set of skills and work that their roles required,” Rowreader said.

The issue began when Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 that allowed DOGE to restructure the entire federal workforce.

“By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of government itself,” Trump declared in the relevant executive order.

Speaking with AlterNet last month, a USAID employee laid off by DOGE pointed out that millions of people are dying because that program provided free medicine to the world’s poorest communities. DOGE has since refused to provide an analysis of the impact of their cuts.

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