grand opening<\/a> Oct. 9, as the ongoing federal government shutdown was in its second week. \u00a0<\/p>\nIn the two weeks since the grand opening, more than 200 people have visited the Federal Workforce Career Center, according to Anthony Featherstone, executive director of WorkSource Montgomery, which helps staff the facility. He said the number of visitors to the center is growing daily.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moore toured the center Thursday morning with Maryland Secretary of Labor Portia Wu and several local elected officials, including Montgomery County Council President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) and members of the county\u2019s General Assembly delegation. The tour was closed to the press.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters after the tour, Moore said the state has added around 100,000 jobs since the start of his term in early 2023. The majority have been in the private sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been really focusing on our lighthouse industries like life sciences and AI, and aerospace and defense and IT, which are really helping to drive the measures of economic growth that we continue to see within our state,\u201d Moore said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the same time, Moore added, \u201cthe pain is real\u201d for people impacted by the shutdown and the federal job cuts that preceded it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already seen over 15,000 Marylanders that [President] Donald Trump fired before the federal government shutdown, and no state has a greater level of exposure to the federal government shutdown than the state of Maryland,\u201d Moore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich noted in early October that there were 77,550 federal workers living in the county at the beginning of 2025. Of those, more than 48,000 also worked at federal agencies in the county.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lack of data<\/p>\n
Officials say it\u2019s difficult to tell whether Maryland\u2019s increase in private sector jobs has been offset by the recent loss of federal government jobs, which is partially because the federal government has not been notifying the state prior to conducting reductions-in-force and other mass firings. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Maryland has raised the issue in court challenges to some of the Trump administration\u2019s actions. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe law says they\u2019re supposed to provide notice. They have not been complying,\u201d Wu told Bethesda Today in an interview after the tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In lieu of advance notice from the federal government, the state Department of Labor has been relying on networks such as Mobilize Montgomery to flag federal job cuts, Wu said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s especially difficult to say exactly how many Marylanders have experienced job loss or furloughs since the government shut down, Wu said. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said the state labor department should have had additional employment data this week from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that there has been a lag because of the shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be important that we figure out after the shutdown ends what those numbers are,\u201d Wu told reporters Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Until then, Wu told Bethesda Today in an interview, the department is looking for other clues that signify the impacts of recent federal actions. \u00a0<\/p>\n
One of those clues is claims for unemployment insurance. Since the shutdown began, there have been 3,800 new federal employee claims filed in Maryland, Wu said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
That number represents only federal employees who work in the state. Federal employees who live in Maryland but work in another jurisdiction would file a claim in that jurisdiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The state is also tracking how many people have applied for a new federal worker loan program that Moore opened in response to the shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since the program opened Oct. 6, almost 1,400 people have applied, Wu said. A few hundred checks have already been sent to furloughed federal workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moore also spoke to the importance of having a dedicated job center for former federal workers in Maryland and in Montgomery County specifically.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see there\u2019s a sense of frustration, there\u2019s a sense of anger about what they\u2019re seeing from the federal administration,\u201d Moore said of laid-off and furloughed workers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when they leave this building, and they see that the state and the county and the private sector is rallying to support them, I think people are leaving with a real sense of hope.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Find more resources for displaced federal employees here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Wes Moore (D) touted job growth under his administration while acknowledging the impact recent federal actions have…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":327663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,420,50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-327662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115426060101062674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}