Trump's foreign aid cuts scramble young public servants' career plans
Entry-level workers at USAID, other federal agencies and government-backed nonprofits are filing for unemployment and applying to private-sector jobs.
President Donald Trump’s push to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and remake the federal workforce is causing whiplash for those who recently entered it hoping for long, stable careers in public service.
Krisna Patel, 23, said she filed for unemployment insurance last week after getting laid off from her job at a program partly run by USAID. She’d worked there for just four months after earning her master’s in public health from Oregon State University last spring.
“You never expect that to happen to you, especially because you’re told the federal government is safe and that you have job security and great benefits,” she said.
Patel was among the full-time contractors who were let go in recent weeks after the Trump administration paused foreign assistance funding for 90 days, citing a need to perform an “assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”
You’re told the federal government is safe and that you have job security.
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