The federal government is the largest employer in the country — and has historically been a stable one. But then tech billionaire Elon Musk mounted a push to slash agency jobs across the executive branch, driving nearly half of all layoffs across in the United States so far in 2025, according to one jobs report from this month.

But women and people of color are among those most affected by cuts to certain agencies, according to a new analysis from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). The layoffs and buyouts have shaken the government employee base, which has more built-in protections and benefits than many positions in the private sector.

“The elimination of all these federal jobs passes these female workers into a market that does discriminate on the basis of sex,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents over 750,000 federal workers.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order terminating any federal programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — a sweeping and vague mandate that put even marginally related initiatives on the chopping block. Coupled with that was Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which had unprecedented and far-reaching authority to dictate agency reductions and closures.

Women made up the majority of workers in departments — including Veterans Affairs, Education, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development — targeted for these larger-scale layoffs. Women also make up the majority of employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Voice of America, which are among other agencies that have been or are expected to be gutted or shuttered altogether.

This has pulled out the “explicit” career ladders on which women federal employees could rely, according to Simon.

“You can’t find yourself in a situation that says, ‘You’re doing really great work, but sorry, we don’t have room for any promotions,’” Simon said. “Promotions were sort of built in — it was and is a positive attribute of federal employment for any group that experiences discrimination when it comes to career advancement.”

Media organizations and watchdog groups don’t have exact numbers on the roughly 280,000 federal employees who have been impacted in some way by the second Trump-era cuts and buyouts. Current data does not suggest that women have been disproportionately or specifically targeted for mass terminations. 

But an overt lack of transparency means experts cannot meaningfully dissect the cuts and buyouts. The White House recently removed current and historic diversity data from public government websites, further obscuring the effects of mass layoffs. Numbers like those in the NWLC report are so far the closest to approximating the populations that have been most affected by Musk’s reduction efforts.

However, the series of layoffs illuminates the diversity in the federal government’s 2.3 million workers, 47 percent of whom were women as of September 2024. While the stereotype of an older White man in government might be true for leadership and supervisory positions, she said the report shows how many women and people of color have found a path to the middle class through stable government jobs, which carried predictable schedules, raises and union representation. They are also supposed to be protected from arbitrary firings.

“The federal government creates such great opportunities and has such quality jobs that we don’t always see in the private industry,” said Sarah Javaid, the report’s author. “It is a huge attraction to people, and it is far more diverse than we initially thought. It’s so clear why people come to these jobs.”

“All those things are rare in the private sector, and now they’re being obliterated,” said Liz Morris, co-director of the Center for WorkLife Law. 

The California-based advocacy organization focuses on gender and racial equity, and opened a hotline for laid-off workers in April to help connect them with legal help. Morris said that before this year’s layoffs, they had never received so many calls from federal workers. 

Outside of layoffs, she said caregivers and pregnant workers have endured the deepest impact from the changes to federal employee standards, including orders earlier this year to return to work in-person and a lack of reasonable accommodations. Attempts to address these concerns can go unanswered when human resources departments within these same agencies have also been gutted, Morris added.

“People who are expecting a baby … a time when a stable income is absolutely critical — people are being terminated, having their termination reversed by a court order, then they’re being terminated again — all the while they have a baby on the way,” she said. She added that other factors like economic strain, losing health insurance or job searching while pregnant compound the fear many workers feel right now.

She said she has even heard from employees who have returned from parental leave only to be fired and asked to pay back the leave they just took.

“In the past, the federal government was an excellent employer,” Morris said. “Any employer can make missteps, but generally, federal employees could count on civil service protections… That security has been shattered.”