With federal workers in the crosshairs of the new administration, the United States’s 2.3 million federal employees have been thrust into an era of the greatest job insecurity they’ve faced in decades.
The federal government is a large employer across the country, but jobs are distributed unevenly across the states. Below is a table of federal government employment by state as reported by the federal Office of Personnel Management.
| State | Federal Employees | Federal Employees per 1,000 Workers |
|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | 162,489 | 211 |
| Maryland | 144,497 | 51 |
| Hawaii | 24,804 | 38 |
| Virginia | 147,358 | 34 |
| Alaska | 11,658 | 34 |
| New Mexico | 22,695 | 25 |
| West Virginia | 17,301 | 24 |
| Oklahoma | 42,212 | 24 |
| Wyoming | 6,832 | 23 |
| Montana | 11,353 | 21 |
| Maine | 12,717 | 19 |
| Utah | 33,961 | 19 |
| South Dakota | 8,940 | 19 |
| Alabama | 41,319 | 19 |
| Rhode Island | 8,598 | 17 |
| Mississippi | 19,690 | 16 |
| Georgia | 81,366 | 16 |
| Washington | 58,508 | 16 |
| Colorado | 41,167 | 14 |
| North Dakota | 5,736 | 13 |
| Idaho | 10,993 | 13 |
| Missouri | 37,220 | 12 |
| Kansas | 17,824 | 12 |
| Kentucky | 23,449 | 11 |
| Vermont | 3,368 | 11 |
| Pennsylvania | 66,656 | 11 |
| Arizona | 34,460 | 11 |
| Oregon | 20,952 | 10 |
| South Carolina | 24,863 | 10 |
| Arkansas | 14,269 | 10 |
| North Carolina | 51,900 | 10 |
| Ohio | 56,068 | 10 |
| Nebraska | 10,412 | 10 |
| Louisiana | 19,486 | 10 |
| Tennessee | 32,574 | 10 |
| Florida | 95,167 | 9 |
| Texas | 130,686 | 9 |
| Nevada | 13,967 | 9 |
| California | 150,679 | 8 |
| Delaware | 3,998 | 8 |
| Indiana | 24,499 | 8 |
| Illinois | 45,213 | 7 |
| New Hampshire | 5,208 | 7 |
| Massachusetts | 25,698 | 7 |
| Michigan | 29,822 | 7 |
| Iowa | 9,930 | 6 |
| Minnesota | 18,183 | 6 |
| Wisconsin | 17,946 | 6 |
| New York | 54,092 | 5 |
| New Jersey | 22,684 | 5 |
| Connecticut | 7,304 | 4 |
Table 1: Federal Employees by State
The top of the list is not a state at all, but the District of Columbia, where about one in five workers are employed by the federal government. This makes sense because DC is the nation’s capital and center of the federal government.
The federal government employs five percent of Maryland’s entire workforce and three and a half percent of Virginia’s, likely due to their relative proximity to the capital. These two states come in number one and number three respectively among U.S. states.
Maryland has a range of departments with federal offices located within it. A heavy-hitter is the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which employs over 18,000 people who conduct, fund, and disseminate health research. The Federal Food and Drug administration, headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, employs nearly 14,000 people who inspect and monitor products and conduct research on product safety.
Virginia is another major state for federal employees. Surprisingly, its largest federal employer is not in northern Virginia near D.C., but instead in Norfolk, located in southern Virginia. The United States Fleet Forces Command, one of the major forces of the United States Navy, is headquartered at the world’s largest naval base. The base employs over 20,000 people in Virginia. Another major employer is the Veterans Health Administration, which employs over 10,000 people in the state.
Doubling back, the state with the second-highest concentration of federal workforce is Hawaii. Despite having a total state workforce just shy of 650,000, the federal government employs nearly 25,000 people in Hawaii (3.8% of the workforce). This is largely due to naval employment: the federal government employs over 6,400 people for its naval pacific fleet and over 2,100 people for its naval facilities engineering command.
Fourth highest is Alaska, which has about three and a half percent of its workforce employed by the federal government. I wrote a lot about this state in my recent blog post about which states depend most on federal funds. Federal employment in Alaska is driven by two characteristics of the state—its massive landmass and its small population. This leads to a need for federal employees to manage airfields and public lands. Due to Alaska’s strategic position near the arctic circle and its reliance on flight as a major form of transportation, these sectors employ large numbers of Alaskans. The federal government employs nearly 1,800 people in its Pacific Air Forces and over 1,100 people in the Federal Aviation Administration. The federal government also employs nearly 900 people in Alaska for the National Park Service, nearly 800 for the Forest Service, nearly 700 for the Bureau of Land Management, and nearly 500 for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The ranking drops off considerably after the top four (or five if you count the District of Columbia), with the other 46 states having less than three percent of their workforce employed by the federal government. The next four states are rural states with (with the exception of Wyoming) elevated poverty rates. The federal government employs two and a half percent of the workforces in each of these states.
Coming in at number five is New Mexico. New Mexico has about 3,400 Veterans Health Administration employees, but also 3,200 Indian Health Service employees who provide medical care, public health services, and community health support to American Indian communities in the state. New Mexico also has 2,400 Forest Service employees, some Air Force presence, and over 900 employees for its Bureau of Indian Education.
Maryland and Virginia have large federal workforces due to their proximity to Washington, Alaska and Hawaii have large workforces due to their strategic military locations, and New Mexico does due to its large Native American population. West Virginia, at number six, has largely benefited from politics. The 2,000 West Virginians employed by the federal government’s Bureau of Fiscal Services and 1,200 employed by the Internal Revenue Service are largely located in West Virginia because of federal government decentralization in the mid-20th century and adept political maneuvering by Senator Robert Byrd, who was canny at directing funds back to his home state. West Virginia also has drawn some federal employees due to its geography. The 1,000 people employed by the Bureau of Prisons and 900 employees of the Army Corps of Engineers each take advantage of West Virginia’s mountainous terrain for their respective projects.
At number seven is Oklahoma. The federal government employs 15,000 Oklahoma residents for the Air Force Materiel Command, many at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. Another 6,000 people are employed by the Veterans Affairs Administration and 3,000 are employed by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Wyoming has the eighth highest concentration of federal workers. Due to its public lands, the federal government employs 2,700 people in Wyoming between its National Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management employees.
As the new federal administration aims to slash jobs at the federal level, states closest to Washington are likely to take the hardest hits. If they decide to slash military jobs, places like Alaska, Hawaii, and Oklahoma could face significant hits to their workforces. If natural lands are in the crosshairs, which they seem to be, Alaska and Wyoming could be hurting. To understand how persistent these employment policy changes are, we will have to see how much these discussions play out over the next few years.