WASHINGTON—Right-wing GOP President Donald Trump’s massive federal worker cuts—in reality, firings—are finally starting to appear in the nation’s unemployment statistics.
Delayed by Trump’s 43-day partial federal shutdown, the jobless data for October and November showed the private sector claimed to create 121,000 new jobs in those two months, roughly evenly split between them.
But 168,000 federal workers joined the U.S. unemployment rolls in October alone, and another 6,700 did so in November. That brought federal employment, not counting the U.S. Postal Service, down to 2.151 million.
And though the USPS is entering its busy holiday season, it too shed jobs: -1,200 in October before reclaiming half of them in November. It employed 592,500 people at the end of the two months.
The federal jobless cuts drove the unemployment rate among all government workers—federal, state and local–from 1.6% (372,000) in November 2024 to 2.7% (613,000) in November 2025.
The overall U.S. jobless rate in November 2025 was 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September. There were no October numbers because of the shutdown, which made that survey collection meaningless, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
By contrast, the national jobless rate in November 2024 was 4.2%. There were 7.6 million jobless people nationwide then, BLS calculated—and 7.83 million this November.
“People are struggling to put food on the table and pay their rent, groceries and more,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler tweeted on BlueSky about the numbers. “The Trump administration’s economic policies are hurting workers, but they sure help the billionaires and corporate CEOs who are raking in more profits than ever.”
October marked the first month federal workers lost the initial buyouts which Trump and his worker-hating Office of Management and Budget director, Russell Vought, strong-armed them into accepting.
His furloughs with pay, which were really firings—thanks to Vought and multibillionaire Elon Musk—occurred in the spring. The buyouts expired September 30. They may start up again after January 30.
The temporary money bill to keep the government going ended the shutdown, but also preserved the massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, and the end of federal tax subsidies for clients of the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. That funding measure, called a continuing resolution, expires January 30. So does its moratorium on further federal firings.
And ACA health care premiums could double or more. Those ACA subsidies cease on December 31, and Congress’s ruling Republicans refuse to extend them. Wrangling over their future continued on Capitol Hill during the week of December 15, with no solution in sight.
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