Meghan Burns was busy at work for the Department of Education in March 2025 when her computer restarted at exactly 5 p.m. When it turned back on, she learned that her job as a civil rights attorney had been terminated.
In a heartbeat, she and colleagues in seven of the department's 10 civil rights offices were locked out and no longer federal employees.
But public service was the only career Burns had ever had. She wasn't ready for it to be over.
"When I graduated law school, I specifically moved to DC because I knew I wanted to do public service and civil rights-based work. That has been all I've done," she said.
More than 317,000employeesstopped working for the federal government in 2025, according tothe Office of Personnel Management, as part of PresidentDonald Trump's sweeping efforts to downsize the government. The majority of employees took voluntary buyouts andearly retirements, according to the agency. Tens of thousands of employees were fired.
The layoffs and intentional downsizing led to a nationwide scramble as federal workers with specialized skills competed for private and nonprofit sector jobs.
But like Burns, some former federal workers found they could continue serving by working at another level of government.
"The federal government's loss is their gain for sure," said Burns, now Deputy Director of the Maryland Department of Health's Office of Equal Opportunity Program.
After federal layoffs were announced, states including California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia urged federal employees to apply for local positions, with several offering to streamline the process and make the transition easier.
"It's been a huge opportunity for communities that have captured really tenured high-quality talent that they just wouldn't have had access to in any other scenario," said Caitlin Lewis, who co-founded Work for America, which helps people find public-sector jobs."
Working for his hometown has its satisfactions
After living all over the world for 25 years in the foreign service, Marc Shaw, 51, was ready to come home to Kansas City, Missouri.
He had entered government service right after graduate school. Shaw oversaw arms control and compliance efforts, monitored conformity with biological and chemical weapons treaties, and served as director of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs section in Afghanistan. When he left in April after working for six presidents, he was a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department.
"The question becomes … what do you do with this career? Who is going to want you?" he said.
He applied to nongovernmental organizations, nonprofits, and universities, telling them, "I'll mop the floors. I'll do anything to come back home."
It was his mother who urged him to look into working for the city government, though he wasn't sure how his skills would fit.
But Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas knew how useful such skills, developed while working for the federal government, could be to a city. He jumped at the chance to hire federal workers like Shaw.
"They understand how to navigate bureaucracy. They understand the core mission of what we are trying to do. They have just exceptional expertise," Lucas told USA TODAY. "Getting that level of experience, having that available in large numbers, is not something that local government is typically able to do."
Lucas said he came into office in 2019 hoping to poach federal workers to work for the city, but found most weren't willing to leave the stability and security traditionally associated with federal employment.
Now, Kansas City is competing with other cities for former federal employees with decades of experience who see city employment as a stable bet, he said.
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"For the rest of America, it has been a benefit, and I think a strong opportunity for us to really attract talent that in years past used to be centered exclusively in Washington and now necessarily is looking at opportunities all around the country," he said.
Shaw, who is currently Kansas City's Interim City Auditor, said he likes not having the levels of bureaucracy he worked under at the State Department. Instead, he and his team report to the city council and have more flexibility to move quickly when they identify problems. The position immerses him in the community and lets him see the direct impact of the work, he said.
And, it lets his mother spend more time spoiling her grandson, he said.
"It's really satisfying," Shaw said.
'We never could have imagined the volume of need'
Most of the country's more than 3 million federal employees are non-partisan civil servants who remain in their roles no matter which party is in power.
When Trump won the presidency in late 2024, Lewis expected to focus on helping find public-sector work for the about 4,000 political appointees who would soon lose their jobs.
But, she said, "we absolutely never could have imagined the volume of need that was going to occur come January and February of last year," when so many civil servants were laid off.
Work for America's quickly propped upCivic Match programarranged job fairs, resume reviews, and mental health seminars for newly fired federal employees. They also worked to help both applicants and employers understand how national or even international job experience would translate to meet local and state needs.
Local government often has critical job vacancies, including human resources, finance, procurement, and operations, she said, as well as a gap in mid-career employees who could eventually become leaders.
How many former federal workers found new public sector jobs is unclear, but more than 250 state and local governments use Civic Match, and 187 people have used it to land roles in state or local government since January 2025.
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He felt 'called' to work for the federal government
Austin Holland, 39, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, went to law school primarily because he wanted to work for the federal government. He began serving in the Department of Housing and Urban Development General Counsel's office during Trump's first term.
He resigned in May 2025 when the administration stopped allowing employees to occasionally work from home. Commuting from Lancaster every day wasn't sustainable, and moving with two young kids was too hard, he said.
"I really loved my job, and really felt called to the work I was doing," he said. Holland considered jobs with nonprofits, cities, and states before landing as assistant counsel for the Pennsylvania Housing and Finance Agency.
He worked in administration law at HUD, writing regulations, but also being exposed to a wide array of policy issues, two things he said have helped at the state level, where he gets to work on a wider variety of programs.
"Even (in) big states like Pennsylvania, a state-level agency is still so much smaller than a federal agency," he said.
Now, he can see with his own eyes how he is helping people, Holland said.
"I'm much closer to the direct impact that my work has," he said. "That's awesome."
Sarah D. Wire is a senior national political correspondent for USA TODAY. She can be reached at swire@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Federal workers snapped up by cities in states after layoffs
