What would happen to our economy if Trump succeeds in firing 50,000 government workers?

Any loss of jobs is bad for the economy. I’m not sure how much 50,000 jobs affects it but certainly the local economy would be.

I’d be much more concerned about the effect on our country of losing 50,000 government jobs. That work still has to be done and now there’s 50,000 less people to do it.

It would trash the economy, then 6 months later he would re-hire them and be a HERO. ! !

He may try to close one in four VA hospitals to pay for his “wall” with his contractors (sole sourced – - no bid) putting it up.

And they get upset when we call them Fright wingers.

It would affect the DC metro area a little if they all are in that area.

When I lived in Raleigh, NC Nortel Networks let go of 35,000 employees (my husband worked for them) most of whom worked in the area. Other similar companies. Let go of people too. The real estate market went down a little (not a lot) and the stick market went down quite a bit, but part of that was the specific industry taking a hard hit.

The DC metro area is around 5.5 to 6 million people. It’s very heavily populated.

It’s not that the economy would be affected from those former employees not having the income, it’s also that the Federal agencies would be affected by the work just not getting done, or the departments being totally eliminated. For example, if national parks didn’t have the proper amount of park rangers and maintenance people, those parks wouldn’t be able to be open to the public, or vast portions of them wouldn’t be able to be open to the public.

If you have Section 8 or other federal housing programs, applications wouldn’t be able to be processed or would take way longer to process. If you file your taxes, the IRS wouldn’t be able to be so expeditious with processing the returns.

Those are just a few examples.

They would get severance and unemployment and maybe some employees would be eligible for early or regular retirement and offer to leave.

@JLeslie Yes, but the work still wouldn’t get done (not sure if your comment was in response to mine).

Well, you’d have 50,000 people knocking on the welfare door. Unless trump does away with that system too. The way he figures it, those 50,000 can pull themselves up by the boot straps just like he did.

@jca2 I agree. Where is he planning to cut?

@JLeslie I have no idea. Probably the Justice Department and the FBI to start, because he hates them. Probably (just a guess) anything to do with social programs like Health and Human Services, anything to do with giving money to poor people. Probably (just a guess) Housing and Urban Development to cut Section 8. Kick those people out in the street! It will be like Victorian England, with people sleeping in parks and dying in the street.

@jca2 – USPS gone too. Low cost service for average Americans? No!

I don’t believe anything he says. He throws a lot of pasta against the wall. Gotta wait and see what his groupies start chanting to see what he sticks with so he can ask for more money.

@JLeslie about 30 years ago I was going to college in Western Maryland. The college was in a small town but I lived in a small town about 30 minutes away. A year or so before I moved up there, there had been a tire company, I believe it was Kelly Auto Tires or some such thing that had either gone out of business or at least closed the factories in that area. Well just in the one church that I was the organist at at the time, you wouldn’t believe how many people lost their jobs and of course were negatively impacted by that.

@LifeQuestioner Not sure your point. Did they work for the federal government?

@JLeslie no, but I was just explaining how a smaller area such as DC can be affected greatly by a number of jobs shutting down.

DC isn’t small. Over 5 million people isn’t small to me.

Small compared to the whole country…

I googled and I believe this is what @LifeQuestioner is talking about:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1998/10/06/goodyear-to-close-maryland-subsidiary/03db7edb-98b5-4314-8a63-bdada4eb9d63/

The whole country? The whole country will barely feel the lay-offs. Think about every time the government shuts down, how many of you really feel the effects. Some things will get messed up though and not processed on time, delayed, and slip through the cracks. I looked it up, 2.8 million people word for the federal government. I’m not saying 50,000 isn’t a lot of people to be out of work, but I don’t think the impact will be felt as much as people think.

@jca2 Thanks. Cumberland, MD is very small. Probably less than 40,000 people in that area if we include some small towns near it.

@JLeslie When the government shuts down, as it has several times in the past decade, it’s for a few days or a week and then all is back to normal. It’s not the same as tens of thousands of people losing their jobs, losing their salaries, not being able to pay their mortgages or rent, and then it’s a domino effect, not just from the lost salaries but also from the local economies like workers not going to the office and buying lunches, not being able to afford vacations, not being able to afford a car, or not needing a new car, etc.

@jca2 that’s more closures I guess but this happened years earlier than what the article was talking about.

Maybe this, @LifeQuestioner ?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1986/11/22/cumberland-tire-plant-to-be-closed/213ca5b0-3995-4b40-9773-e664adcf324c/

@jca2 Agreed, but I still think it will mostly be felt in the local area, in the DC metro area. It depends where the cuts are done also. Like if they cut the jobs my mom and dad had, barely anyone would know except for scientists. There have been a lot of government jobs being added in the last few years.

Edit: There was a two-week shut down about 12 years ago, and a 3 week one in the 1990’s under Clinton. Not the same as actual long term lay-offs, but the shut down puts more than 50,000 employees on pause.

I looked it up to check myself, and federal employee count has gone down and up in the last 4 years. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-federal-government/ I thought it had been going up fairly consistently.

It’s nice to have enough govt. employees to provide the govt. services that we paid for.

The first ones to go would be, the FBI, or homeland or social workers. @JLeslie Yes, it has been steadily going down. But its the people who work for the people who keep getting cut back. So programs keep getting cutbacks. I remember years ago talking to a social worker while I was on vacation. So was she. She was employed but said there was an extreme shortage of social workers so it takes her months sometimes before she can see clients that need to be checked on regularly. This is why we have such a severe mental crisis in our nation. There is probably few that will ever get help.

@Pandora According to my link it is going up and down. Federal social workers? I didn’t even know we have those. I think of that as a state level position.

@JLeslie They work in federal, state, and local.
socialworkers.

@Pandora Thanks. Learned something new.

50,000? That is not even high enough to notice.