After Elon Musk began slashing the federal workforce, some 200,000 civil servants left their government jobs. That was either through firings, forced relocations or a “deferred resignation” program. 

The sweeping cuts raised alarm bells about the loss of “institutional knowledge.” Some think tanks and nonprofits are concerned that without veteran employees – the ones with years of experience and training – the government will flail and sputter.

Losing expertise would, in theory, pose a threat to the normal functioning of government. 

But amid all the slicing and dicing of bureaucracy, young people also lost their jobs: those bright-eyed, freshly minted graduates, who came to Washington D.C. with noble goals and unbridled passion.

While they may not bring years of experience, Sarah Sladek argues they’re still essential to the workplace, “we so desperately need their ideas, passion, enthusiasm.” 

Sladek is the CEO of XYZ University and specializes in workplace age diversity. She says that when an office is filled with too many older employees, “That’s when we run into things like delays in productivity. We stop being innovative, because we’re just getting more of the same. We’re creating echo chambers, essentially.” 

But it’s not just companies or federal agencies that lose out. It’s also the young people themselves. Their morale has taken a real hit. 

Divali Legore graduated from Georgia Tech in 2024. She started working for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau soon after. 

Then, she was cut, as a part of a reduction in force.

At the time, she was on a road trip, headed to Tennessee, but she still remembers the moment she got the email, “I remember reading it, and I've never been fired from a job before, so I was like, this is literally so bizarre and insane.” 

She tried to remind herself that it was out of her control, that it wasn’t her fault. But she said, “It just feels really personal, especially when it’s something that you care so much about, and to see all of this kind of be torn apart.” 

Legore said that going into federal government work, she knew there would be ebbs and flows, depending on the administration in power. But she “didn't expect for it to be this drastic of a change” and that she hopes this is not the new normal. 

Now, she’s thinking about different options, besides federal work. She’d still like to find a career in regulatory policy, but she’s “not sure if federal government is exactly the right place to be,” at least in the immediate future. Instead, she’d like to work on a state or local level, saying she has seen how meaningful that kind of work can be.

But it’s not just recent post-grads who lost jobs. Some agencies also had to shut down their internship programs because of the federal hiring freeze.

Vincent Tocci is a senior at Williams College, and his summer internship at the Department of State was cancelled.

He once dreamed of a career in foreign policy but said, “At this point, I don't see being a diplomat as a career possibility for me, at least in the near term.”

Internships, like the one Tocci accepted, are essential for young employee retention. A 2023 report from MissionSquare Research Institute surveyed state and local government employees under the age of 35. It found that four in 10 respondents had a different job in the public sector before their current role. 

There is a benefit to catching young talent early on. Rob Shriver is the former acting director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and is currently Democracy Forward’s managing director of the Civil Service Strong. Shriver said those professional development programs are “an opportunity to get somebody who's new to the workforce, to train them in the way that that agency is doing business.” From there, they can hit the ground running and grow as employees. 

Without that summer internship, Tocci is reassessing his career plans, “Law school is kind of back on the table in terms of where I'm going, because I do need a career,” he said. 

His disillusionment is not uncommon for young people in the workplace, said Sladek. “We know that for young people, especially, that when bridges are burned, when they're laid off or when it feels like a dead end to them. It's hard to get them back.” That’s because, like other workers, young people want a sense of safety and security in their jobs, according to Sladek. 

That could spell trouble for the federal government – where it’s already hard enough to attract workers. The salaries usually can’t compete with the private sector, according to Shriver. So, the government appeals to mission, impact and stability. According to the same 2023 report from MissionSquare, 32% of respondents cited job security as a top factor that attracted them to the public sector. Without that pull, federal agencies may lose a generation of young employees. 

“It’s such a huge problem for the future of staffing and the government,” said Shriver. He worries that young people will be hesitant to join the federal workforce going forward. 

That’s the case with Kristin Comrie, at least. She needed to complete an internship to earn her graduate degree in health care informatics. Then her summer gig at the Veterans Health Agency was slashed. 

She said she was excited about the opportunity. She wanted to explore a potential career in the federal government. But she said, “I'm absolutely disillusioned at this point,” and that she wouldn’t consider federal work as an option again.