Trumps Cuts to Federal Work Force Push Out Young Employees

About six months ago, Alex Brunet, a recent Northwestern University graduate, moved to Washington and started a new job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as an honors paralegal.It was fitting for Mr.

Brunet, 23, who said he had wanted to work in public service for as long as he could remember and help “craft an economy that works better for everyone.”But about 15 minutes before he was going to head to dinner with his girlfriend on the night before Valentine’s Day, an email landed in his inbox informing him that he would be terminated by the end of the day — making him one of many young workers who have been caught up in the Trump administration’s rapid wave of firings.“It’s discouraging to all of us,” Mr.Brunet said.

“We’ve lost, for now at least, the opportunity to do something that matters.”Among the federal workers whose careers and lives have been upended in recent weeks are those who represent the next generation of civil servants and are now wrestling with whether they can even consider a future in public service.The Trump administration’s moves to reduce the size of the bureaucracy have had an outsize impact on these early career workers.Many of them were probationary employees who were in their roles for less than one or two years, and were among the first to be targeted for termination.

The administration also ended the Presidential Management Fellows Program, a prestigious two-year training program for recent graduates interested in civil service, and canceled entry-level job offers.The firings of young people across the government could have a long-term effect on the ability to replenish the bureaucracy with those who have cutting-edge skills and knowledge, experts warn.Donald F.

Kettl, a former dean in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, says that young workers bring skills “the government needs” in fields like information technology, medicine and environmental protection.We are having trou...