\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>licia Contreras was in Tunisia, working as the deputy country representative for Libya for USAID, when she received the news: she was fired. The Trump administration had ceased the cooperation agency\u2019s operations and terminated most overseas staff. What she didn\u2019t expect back then was that after a double major, an MBA and 17 years of experience as a public servant, she wouldn\u2019t be able to find a job back at home.<\/p>\n Contreras moved back to the Washington DC area last September and immediately started her job search. She looked for positions in both the public and private sectors, in-person, hybrid and remote. She focused her search mostly on the US capital city and its two nearby states, Maryland and Virginia, because of her family commitments: she has two children, ages three and six. Six months later, none of her close to 100 applications have been successful.<\/p>\n \u201cThe job market is pretty bad here. I got a request to do like an AI video interview, but other than that, most of it has been rejections,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s saturated.\u201d<\/p>\n Hers is not an isolated case. Washington DC\u2019s unemployment rate is now the highest since August 2015, excluding the pandemic, according to the most recent data. More than 300,000 jobs have been cut from the federal government, the region\u2019s largest employer, since 2024. The cuts came after Donald Trump led a purge of federal employees, a move he said was meant to \u201celiminate waste\u201d and a task he assigned to Elon Musk and his \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d (Doge).<\/p>\n By January, federal public employment had fallen to its lowest level in at least a decade, affecting many other businesses and sectors. As a result, DC now has the highest unemployment rate in the country (6.7%), followed by California (5.5%). And the experts don\u2019t believe the situation will improve in the short term.<\/p>\n According to data from Indeed, the job listings website, job openings reflect this situation. \u201cIf you look at our most recent data, DC job postings are 30% below where they were pre-Covid, and that is the softest among all states in the US,\u201d said Laura Ullrich, Indeed\u2019s director of economic research. \u201cAnd it\u2019s broad-based, especially if you compare it to some other states. In South Carolina, for example, we\u2019re 28% above pre-Covid. There are still some sectors that are below pre-pandemic levels, but not many of them. In DC, there\u2019s a pretty broad group of sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal government reduced funding for grants, generating a big fall in jobs in scientific areas and other sectors. Also, the administration\u2019s efforts to shrink the federal government led to widespread termination of federal contractors. As a result, an employee of a consulting firm, who requested his name not be used, was fired in January last year, along with another 75 colleagues, representing 85% of the total workforce. \u201cAt the beginning, I got zero, nothing, not even a bite, not even a phone call. I was like: \u2018What the hell is happening?\u2019 But I was talking to a lot of people and a lot of friends, and they were all the same,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A year and two months later, he\u2019s had about 15 interviews, but nothing has landed. \u201cIt\u2019s been a very, very difficult process \u2026 especially with all of that education and training now being in this position\u201d. He went to Bates College, a top-tier, small liberal arts college in Maine, and to the also top-tier private Georgetown University in DC, where he obtained a master\u2019s in science and international development.<\/p>\n Something interviewees for this article mentioned is that many of their former colleagues or friends are having a hard time not only finding a new position, but finding something that offers equivalent pay to what they had before. Consequently, many are taking salary cuts, or are going from high-level senior positions to junior or mid-level positions.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been told \u2018you\u2019re overqualified\u2019 many times,\u201d said Felipe Mendy, an Argentinian veterinarian and first-time father of a three-month-old who\u2019s been unemployed for two years. \u201cFirstly, I thought it was a matter of language or culture. I thought that maybe I needed a US degree \u2026 but then I started meeting many who went to very prestigious universities and also couldn\u2019t find a job. Many highly qualified people with experience at organizations such as the Organization of American States or the World Bank are working at coffee shops.\u201d<\/p>\n He experienced that himself. Mendy lived in Washington for the past six years, where he and his wife moved because of her job as an economist. After he lost his job in a US company specializing in animal nutrition, he helped coach a rugby team and walked neighbours\u2019 dogs while applying for jobs that matched his qualifications, which include an MBA.<\/p>\n He did some consulting for a small recruitment firm too, where he clearly saw what was happening in the job market: he would publish a job position, and hundreds of people applied, something the firm had never seen, and which affected its business. \u201cMany had nothing to do with the job, but applied.\u201d At a certain point, many of their clients decided that they didn\u2019t need help recruiting and the firm had to let him go.<\/p>\n A month ago, the couple decided to stop his job search and go back to Argentina, where he quickly found a position at a Danish multinational firm. \u201cWith just one salary, we couldn\u2019t live in that city, it wasn\u2019t viable. And we downsized, tightened our belts, but at a certain point we thought: \u2018For what?\u2019 After my US experience, I\u2019m a lot more valuable back home.\u201d<\/p>\n Affordability is a big issue for those searching for a position. DC is one of the most expensive cities in the US, where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $3,100, according to the online rental marketplace Apartments.com. The high cost of living makes staying in the city while unemployed an expensive privilege. \u201cWe\u2019ve had to budget a lot. My husband is working three jobs. He has no choice, because he has to make up for my salary, and we have to pay for childcare, our mortgage and food,\u201d said Contreras, who feels lucky that her family is able to get healthcare through her husband\u2019s job so they don\u2019t need to pay for insurance out of pocket.<\/p>\n That budgeting and, therefore, spending cuts, also affect the city\u2019s private sector, particularly services used by workers, from cleaners to gyms and restaurants, that hadn\u2019t recovered from the pandemic in part because many people continued to work remotely.<\/p>\n Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s, a Spanish chef and owner of many local restaurants, wrote in a recent X post that restaurants in DC are closing at a higher rate in 2025 than in 2024. \u201cWhat we need is stability \u2026 Tariffs, tourism, Ice etc are affecting negatively the economy \u2026\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n According to the Washington Post, 123 private companies in the DC area announced job cuts in 2025, affecting more than 13,000 workers, the highest annual total since the pandemic.<\/p>\n But besides affordability, overqualification and their futures, many also struggle with the impact of the Trump administration\u2019s decisions and, in particular, the erosion of institutions that have played important roles. For that reason, Contreras has decided to run for the Maryland house of delegates, the state legislature, representing her district. \u201cMost of my life I\u2019ve been a public servant, and I want to continue to serve people and help our communities. That\u2019s why I decided to do it. I want to make sure that I\u2019m not just standing around and watching things fall apart. I need to fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alicia Contreras was in Tunisia, working as the deputy country representative for Libya for USAID, when she received the news: she was fired. The Trump administration had ceased the cooperation agency\u2019s operations and terminated most overseas staff. What she didn\u2019t expect back then was that after a double major, an MBA and 17 years of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[24147,659,7697,4928,2622,19244,5118,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-48043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-dcs","9":"tag-find","10":"tag-happening","11":"tag-highly","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-qualified","14":"tag-washington","15":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}