Maryland Can’t Spin Away the Loss of 25,000 Federal Jobs

By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews

Maryland Governor Wes Moore took to social media this week to blame the Trump administration for what he described as “attacks on federal workers,” claiming those actions cost Maryland nearly 25,000 federal jobs in the past year. While the governor framed the losses as an external assault that his administration successfully fought back against, the numbers raise harder questions his victory lap does not answer.

Federal employment is not an abstract statistic in Maryland. It is a cornerstone of the state’s economy—supporting middle-class families, anchoring local tax bases, and sustaining entire communities around Washington, D.C., Fort Meade, and other federal hubs. Losing 25,000 federal jobs is not a rhetorical inconvenience; it is an economic shock that households felt immediately.

The Trump administration’s attacks on federal workers left hundreds of thousands of Marylanders in the lurch.

Their actions have cost Maryland nearly 25,000 federal jobs last year alone. But we didn’t just sit down and take the beating. We fought back.

Our unemployment rate…

— Governor Wes Moore (@GovWesMoore) January 7, 2026

Governor Moore argues that Maryland “didn’t just sit down and take the beating,” pointing instead to a statewide unemployment rate below the national average and the addition of nearly 100,000 private and public sector jobs. But aggregate job growth does not automatically offset the loss of stable, high-skill federal positions. The critical question is not how many jobs were added—but what kind.

Federal jobs tend to offer higher wages, long-term stability, and benefits that support homeownership and local spending. Replacing them with lower-paying service work, short-term contracts, or state-funded positions may improve headline numbers while quietly weakening the economic foundation underneath. Marylanders who lost federal employment are unlikely to feel “moving forward” if they are forced into less secure or lower-paid work.

There is also an accountability gap in the governor’s narrative. Blaming Washington may be politically convenient, but Maryland’s leadership still bears responsibility for mitigating foreseeable risks. A state as dependent on federal employment as Maryland should have contingency plans, diversification strategies, and clear protections for displaced workers. Pointing to national politics after the fact does not substitute for proactive economic stewardship.

Moore’s messaging reflects a broader trend in modern politics: redefining success by changing the scoreboard. Job totals alone cannot measure economic health if job quality, wage growth, and household stability are ignored. Nor does optimism erase the disruption faced by thousands of families who built their lives around federal service.

Maryland deserves more than resilience rhetoric. It deserves transparency about what was lost, honesty about what replaced it, and a serious plan to ensure that future federal workforce shifts do not leave tens of thousands of residents “in the lurch” again.

Economic leadership is not about absorbing blows and celebrating survival. It is about preventing avoidable damage—and ensuring that progress is real, not just statistical.

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