Fear and uncertainty loom large over how much smaller the federal workforce in Hawaii will become under an unfolding multipronged effort by President Donald Trump, though the impact may be less, relative to other states.
The number of civilians employed by the federal government in Hawaii is close to midway among states. But the local federal workforce is heavily concentrated in the defense sector, which has not been among top targets mentioned by Trump so far.
Trump on Tuesday issued an executive order directing leaders of all federal agencies to prepare to initiate “large-scale” reductions in force, excluding military personnel and jobs related to public safety, law enforcement or immigration enforcement.
The order, aimed at eliminating “waste, bloat, and insularity,” follows a recent buyout offer accepted by about 75,000 federal workers around the country and a hiring freeze that included a recommendation to rescind around 200,000 job offers and jobs for probationary employees.
Hawaii was home to about 35,500 federal civilian workers last year, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
Eugene Tian, DBEDT’s chief economist, said this group represents 5.6% of Hawaii’s workforce. “It is significant,” he said.
Tian also expects there will be negative economic impact locally from the president’s initiative to downsize the federal workforce, but to what extent he won’t even guess.
“I don’t think anybody knows what would be the magnitude,” Tian said.
Trump is largely relying on a team of private-industry volunteers led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to engineer job cuts under the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not an official government agency.
The president claims that his objective is to make the federal workforce, which includes 2.4 million employees excluding active- duty military and U.S. Postal Service workers, more efficient. Meanwhile, legal challenges have been made to stop job cuts.
>> RELATED: Federal job losses could be local government gains
Carl Bonham, director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, said local federal worker job cuts tied only to the buyout and recent hires could offset total expected job growth for the state this year if the cuts are in proportion to the national total estimated at close to 300,000 cuts.
Nationally, these cuts represent about 12% of the federal civilian workforce. A 12% cut locally would amount to 4,260 jobs.
However, Bonham expects the proportion of job cuts in Hawaii will be smaller, perhaps 10% or less than that, because the composition of the federal workforce in Hawaii, dominated by the Navy, is so much different than in most of the country.
“These aren’t workers at the Consumer (Financial) Protection Bureau who are under attack,” he said. “There’s reason to think that Hawaii won’t see job losses in the same proportion as nationally because the mix is so different here. But we don’t have a lot to go on. Let’s say it’s between 5 and 10%. It’s still a lot.”
Heavy on defense
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the five agencies with the most civilian workers in Hawaii as of last May were, in order, the Navy, the Department of Defense, the Army, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Air Force.
The Navy’s civilian personnel totaled 11,807, close to half of Hawaii’s 24,330 federal worker total reported by OPM, which is less than DBEDT’s tally.
A spokesperson for the Navy’s Office of Information in Washington, D.C., said they could not comment on how civilian Navy jobs in Hawaii may be impacted by the president’s job-cutting initiative.
One federal employee in Hawaii working in the defense sector said there is an expectation among colleagues that jobs tied to national defense will be more insulated from cuts, but there has been no information communicated from higher- level officials one way or another.
“Broadly speaking, the general public should fear cuts to defense,” said the employee, who asked not to be named out of concern for their employment.
In Hawaii, the biggest contingent of federal employees work at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, which repairs ships and submarines and is undergoing a $3.4 billion expansion and modernization project that began last year and is projected for completion in 2028.
Outside the defense sector, the federal civilian workforce in Hawaii is considerably smaller.
Agency distribution
The sixth biggest employer in Hawaii among federal agencies was the Department of Agriculture, with 860 workers mostly within an animal and plant health inspection service followed by research, according to OPM data.
The Department of the Interior had the next biggest number of employees in Hawaii at 635. All these jobs, according to OPM, were divided between the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Hawaii has two national parks, the Pearl Harbor National Memorial and several historical parks or sites governed by NPS.
Elizabeth Fien, president and CEO of Friends of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, a nonprofit that helps preserve and interpret the park’s natural and cultural resources, recently said several new or incoming NPS employees, including a trail supervisor and an engineer, have had their employment rescinded since Trump began his initiative.
Nationally, much of the job-cut or job-freeze focus so far has been at agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the General Services Administration, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and Veterans Affairs.
The only agencies on this list with employees in Hawaii, according to the federal data, was the VA, with 2,177, and the GSA, with 52 split between public buildings service and acquisition service.
Other major sources of federal employment locally include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with 376 employees, the Federal Aviation Administration with 364 employees and the Department of Homeland Security with 332 employees, according to the federal data.
Politico recently reported the Trump administration aims to cut in half the number of employees nationally at NOAA, where operations include the National Weather Service, hurricane centers, fisheries management and climate research.
Union pushback
The efforts by Trump have received pushback, including litigation that could affect actual large-scale employment changes under Tuesday’s presidential order.
The National Federation of Federal Employees has called Trump’s recent employment reduction actions illegal and filed a lawsuit Wednesday with a coalition of labor unions in an effort to halt what the organization described as an attempt to gut the federal workforce in an unpatriotic move that will lead to chaos and poor service.
“Federal workers are your friends and neighbors who have dedicated their careers to serving our country,” Randy Erwin, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “We cannot let the president disrupt their lives and dismantle critical services relied upon by the American people.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, the nation’s largest union representing federal workers, has called Trump’s workforce reduction push reckless and unjustified.
“Firing huge numbers of federal employees won’t decrease the need for government services,” Everett Kelley, the union’s president, said in a statement. “It will just make those services harder or impossible to access for everyday Americans, veterans, and seniors who depend on them.”
—
Federal workforce
The federal agencies with the most civilian employees in Hawaii:
Navy — 11,807
Defense — 3,253
Army — 2,965
Veterans Affairs — 2,177
Air Force — 1,121
Agriculture — 860
Interior — 635
Commerce — 461
Transportation — 385
Homeland Security — 332
Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management
