The National Park Service is among the agencies hit with job cuts since President Donald Trump took office. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Washington state is seeing a sharp increase in unemployment claims by federal workers as the Trump administration moves to slash the government workforce.
Claims from federal employees in Washington have roughly doubled from last year, according to the state’s Employment Security Department. As of Wednesday, 952 federal people had applied for unemployment benefits this year. That’s compared to 472 at this time last year.
With this year’s claims, 703 were filed since Jan. 20, when Trump took office. And 526 since Feb. 13, around the time that the administration moved to fire thousands of “probationary” workers who’d been recently hired or promoted.
Washington state has approximately 76,000 federal employees, nearly 32,000 of them civilian Department of Defense workers. Other large federal employers in the state include the Postal Service and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Transportation.
The departments that took the biggest hits in layoffs were the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and the Postal Service.
At least 190 Department of Agriculture workers and 116 from the Department of Interior filed unemployment claims. The Department of Agriculture includes the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Interior houses the National Park Service, two agencies that have seen cuts.
About 200 of the claims were filed by people in King County and around 80 from people in Pierce County.
“As more federal employees apply for benefits, we’re getting a better picture of the impact,” said Cami Feek, Employment Security Commissioner.
Meanwhile, the Washington state attorney general this week joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the firings of federal employees.