Who are the Philly region’s federal workers? A look at the employees impacted by Trump’s recent executive orders.
Pennsylvania has some 66,000 federal workers. Many work in Veterans Affairs, Defense, and the Treasury.
For tens of thousands of federal workers in the Philadelphia region, President Donald Trump’s executive orders this week could change how they do their jobs.
Among a series of executive orders Trump signed this week, he directed federal employees of the executive branch to return to in-person work full time, instituted a hiring freeze for many federal positions, and established a Department of Government Efficiency.
The Trump administration also put diversity, equity, and inclusion employees on leave on Wednesday, and a memo from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) indicates a forthcoming “reduction in force” for these workers.
“Anxiety and confusion” was taking hold in federal workplaces, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, as DEI meetings got canceled, employees waited for more information on the return-to-office mandate, and human resources informed some recent hires that their job offers were rescinded.
Here’s a closer look at who these workers are.
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How many federal workers are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware?
About 66,100 federal employees are based in Pennsylvania. The federal government was the top employer in the state as of the second quarter of last year, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.
There are about 22,500 federal employees in New Jersey and about 4,000 in Delaware, according to OPM data as of March 2024.
States with the most federal employees are California with 147,487, Texas with 129,738, Virginia with 144,483, and Maryland with 142,876. Washington, D.C., has 162,144.
What jobs do they have?
The largest share of Pennsylvania federal workers — nearly 30% — work in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
In Pennsylvania, the Navy employs about 12% of federal workers, the Department of Defense employs about 12%, the Army employs about 12%, and the Department of the Treasury employs about 9%. A little less than 1% of Pennsylvania’s federal workforce — 612 workers — are employed by the National Park Service.
In Delaware, more than 40% of the federal workforce is employed by Veterans Affairs and more than 23% by the Air Force.
In New Jersey, about 24% of federal workers are employed by the Army, about 21% by Veterans Affairs, and 11% by the Navy.
According to OPM data, about 71% of Pennsylvania’s federal employees are in union jobs — nearly 47,000. In New Jersey that’s about 66% and in Delaware about 62%.
How many federal workers are in Philadelphia?
Philadelphia specifically has about 25,000 federal workers, according to the Federal Executive Boards, a government network that aims to provide coordination between distinct agencies.
The federal government has the second-largest employee base of any public or private entity in Philadelphia, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry as of second quarter 2024, second only to the University of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia’s federal workers include nurses, mechanics, engineers, claims representatives, secretaries, and coin production workers, said Philip Glover, national vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) District 3. AFGE represents about 9,400 federal workers in and near Philly, Glover said, among 800,000 across the U.S. and abroad.
They can be found at the U.S. Mint near Independence Mall, the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in West Philadelphia, the Mid-Atlantic Social Security Center in Old City, and the federal detention center on Arch Street.
The detention center employs doctors, maintenance workers, teachers, psychologists, counselors, case managers, correctional officers, secretaries, and food service workers, said Frank Bailey, northeast regional vice president of AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals 33.
What are federal workers’ salaries?
About half of federal workers make between $50,000 and $109,999 a year, according OPM data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. The average federal worker makes $106,382 per year, according to OPM data.
In Pennsylvania the average is $97,989, in New Jersey it’s $121,844, and in Delaware $102,464.
How many federal employees work remotely?
In Pennsylvania, 66% of the federal workforce is eligible for telework, while in New Jersey 71% are eligible, and in Delaware 49% are eligible.
Over half of the country’s federal employees worked in person during the pandemic due to the nature of their jobs, according to a 2024 report from the Office of Management and Budget.
Remote work was already not an option for about half of the nation’s civilian federal workers as of May 2024, the report notes. Even those who were telework-eligible were in person about 60% of the time.
Some 10% of federal employees had fully remote jobs that didn’t require them to be on-site.
How has the federal workforce grown in recent years?
Federal government employees make up about 1.87% of the entire U.S. workforce, according to 2024 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by the Pew Research Center. That’s a little over 3 million people, including U.S. postal workers but not active-military personnel.
While the total number of federal workers has grown overall in recent decades, their share of the total workforce has stayed pretty stable, according to Pew.