New York officials are encouraging former federal employees fired by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to come get jobs in the state workforce.
Gov. Kathy Hochul launched a job-recruiting initiative last week dubbed “You’re Hired” — a contrast to Trump’s frequently-used “you’re fired” slogan — and expanded it today with an aggressive advertising campaign here in New York and in Washington D.C. The goal is to “recruit experienced individuals and attract them to New York State service.”
“DOGE said you’re fired? New York says: you’re hired!” read digital billboards at D.C.’s Union Station and the city’s Moynihan Station Monday morning. “New York wants you!” it added with directions to a new state government website that hosts an array of resources to help former federal employees apply for jobs in various state agencies.
The initiative is not just rhetoric. The Department of Labor is rolling out free training for affected federal workers focused on resume development, interview preparation, and sharing information about unemployment insurance programs and upcoming career fairs. The state is also pointing applicants to particularly in-demand state jobs, including positions related to the state’s clean energy efforts.
Hochul’s administration says the state has about 7,000 open positions to fill. “We need accountants and lawyers and judges and engineers and inspectors and public health nurses and researchers, digital technicians,” Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon told Crain’s.
She said those are positions already accounted for in the budget. “We are ready to hire them,” Reardon said. “We really need them.”
The state wants to hire former federal workers already living in New York as well as out-of-state residents who would then move here. Before DOGE began making cuts last month, the New York City Independent Budget Office estimated there were about 46,000 federal employees working in the city. It’s not clear how many New Yorkers have lost their jobs due to the DOGE cuts, but thousands of federal workers nationwide have been fired since Trump took office.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to reach out and help fellow public servants who have been unceremoniously kicked to the curb,” Reardon added. “Whatever their need is, we want to get them great jobs.”
Hochul, in her own pitch for the state effort, criticized the roughshod way DOGE has made its cuts.
“Elon Musk and his clueless cadre of career killers know nothing about how government works, who it serves, and the tireless federal employees who keep it running,” she wrote in an announcement of the expanded hiring initiative. “Here in New York we don’t vilify public servants, we value them and their efforts.”
