President
Applications on Indeed's job matching and hiring platform have climbed more than 50% among employees of federal agencies singled out for review by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency — ranging from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Department of Agriculture — the research shows.
A broader Indeed index of applications by federal employees has also climbed "well above recent norms," the firm said, though it's still below the level in 2022 when rapid wage gains and widespread sign-on bonuses across the economy spurred many Americans to switch jobs.
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While it's common to see a "slight uptick" in job-seeking among federal employees after a new president is inaugurated, "the recent surge in job search activity is unprecedented," said Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed, in the report.
Tens of thousands of federal jobs have been cut under the DOGE campaign, which Trump and Musk say is intended to trim public spending and eliminate fraud and waste, though some of its efforts are facing legal challenges. There's been a steady increase in initial jobless claims by federal workers since Trump returned to office in January.
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Page views for the Washington D.C. unemployment insurance website surged from just under 16,000 in October to 320,000 this month, according to data from Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company.
The Indeed study found that terms related to remote work featured prominently in searches by federal employees, suggesting many of them prize flexible work arrangements. "Hiring immediately" was another common inquiry term.
The timing of the Trump-Musk job cuts is likely to prove problematic for federal employees who got laid off, according to Indeed. That's because, amid a general slowdown in hiring, demand for so-called knowledge workers — defined as jobs that require higher educational attainment — has fallen even faster.
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"Federal workers are looking for work at a time when there are likely fewer opportunities that match their education and experience," said Stahle.
Broken down by region, the Indeed data shows that the largest share of federal workers actively seeking another job are in the South. That's followed by employees in the capital area, who make up about one-fifth of the total.
Indeed's study is based on jobseekers among the firm's pool of hundreds of millions of profiles who identify the federal government as their current or (newly) former employer.
