Local workforce watchers will have to wait and see what impact could be felt from the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of government workers.

Steven Gutierrez, a Fresno-based labor market consultant with the California Employment Development Department (EDD), said it could take a month before mass layoffs are noticed in the survey data his department receives from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There is some precedent for mass federal layoffs in Fresno, he said. But factors such as the amount of people currently looking for jobs can affect the reported county unemployment rates.

It’s difficult to know what’s happening in the federal workforce, Gutierrez said, adding the EDD used to receive more detailed data.

Gutierrez noted that more people looking for jobs can be a positive for businesses looking for workers in the labor market.

In Fresno, Kings and Madera counties, there were 11,900 civilian federal workers as of December 2024, according to data released by the EDD on Jan. 24. Fresno County had the most with 9,700, up 1% from the year prior. Kings County was next with 1,000, followed by Tulare County with 900 and Madera County with 300.

Federal employees all over the country responded with anger and confusion Friday as they grappled with the aggressive effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce by ordering agencies to lay off probationary employees who have yet to qualify for civil service protections.

The White House and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which serves as a human resources department for the federal government, declined to say Friday how many probationary workers, who generally have less than a year on the job, have so far been dismissed, reported the Associated Press. According to government data maintained by OPM, 220,000 workers had less than a year on the job as of March 2024.

OMP has given agencies until 8 p.m. Tuesday to issue layoff notices, according to a person familiar with the plan who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The probationary layoffs are the latest salvo in the new administration’s sweeping efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce, which are being led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Trump, in an executive order Tuesday, told agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions” after their initial attempt to downsize the workforce — the voluntary buyout – was accepted by only 75,000 workers.

When it comes to Fresno County, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the largest federal employer, Gutierrez said. The last instance of mass layoffs for local federal employees came in 2021, when the IRS shut down its longtime Fresno tax-processing center.

An IRS official at the time told The Fresno Bee that around 3,000 center employees would lose their jobs with the transfer of operations to a center in Ogden, Utah, at the end of 2021. Some 2,700 Fresno-area employees would remain, the IRS said, with many working at a Downtown Fresno service center.

The New York Times reported Friday that the IRS is expected to lay off thousands of employees in this latest round under the Trump administration starting next week.

Looking at Congressional Districts that touch Fresno, Kings, Madera or Tulare County, the Central Valley’s federal civilian workforce is 34,673, according to a report released December 2024 by the Congressional Research Service from OPM data.

Here is the number of federal civilian workers by district in 2023, followed by the current representative for that district in Congress:

Congressional District 20 (Rep. Vince Fong) — 13,207

Congressional District 5 (Rep. Tom McClintock) — 7,010

Congressional District 21 (Rep. Jim Costa) — 6,513

Congressional District 13 (Rep. Adam Grey) — 4,750

Congressional District 22 (Rep. David Valadao) — 3,792

As of March 2024, onboard federal civilian employment was 147,487 in California, according to the report.

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Frank Lopez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.