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Elon Musk’s mass spending cuts across the government have not just slashed the federal workforce, but may also have axed job opportunities among the largest government contractors in the private sector.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, job openings for the 25 private-sector companies with the largest government contracts have dropped 15%, according to a report published on Thursday by the Indeed Hiring Lab. Listings for all other jobs dipped only 0.6% in the same period.
The precipitous drop in job opportunities at massive government contractors—such as Boeing, Honeywell and Deloitte (though the data does not analyze job openings for the individual companies)—coincides with the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) culling of private-sector contracts, part of the advisory’s efforts to reduce so-called government waste and abuse. DOGE claims to have saved taxpayers $180 billion in workforce reductions, contract and lease cancellations, and other spending cuts, though experts warn the advisory’s calculations are inaccurate and inflated.
These cuts have made their mark on the private sector, with tech companies like Oracle and Leidos reportedly having contracts terminated by DOGE as part of the Pentagon’s goal to slash $580 million in funding. The cuts have also hit Big Four consulting companies like Deloitte, which saw the elimination of at least 120 contracts totalling more than $1 billion, according to a Fortune analysis from April.
Stark disparities in job opportunities available overall compared to the 25 major contractors may indicate these companies are starting to make tough decisions following DOGE cuts, according to Cory Stahle, the report’s author and economist at the Hiring Lab.
“It’s clear that these [cuts to government] funding are having an impact on some of these companies—hiring plans and where they see things going in the coming months—especially as they’ve seen potential pullback to their streams of funding from the government,” Stahle told Fortune.
Financial implications
Companies have begun to report the impact of these cuts. Tech consultancy Accenture warned in March the Trump administration’s cost-cutting could impact sales and revenue. Federal contracts make up about 8% of its global revenue and 16% of its Americas revenue in fiscal 2024. The company reported a quarterly earnings beat last week, but a 6% decrease in bookings. Chief financial officer Angie Park said the impact of federal funding cuts on the business, though, was “immaterial.”
Booz Allen Hamilton, a consultancy among the top 25 contractors, which derives about 98% of its revenue from government contracts, announced it would lay off about 2,500 employees, primarily staff involved in parts of the company working for non-defense U.S. agencies.
“All presidential transitions create some degree of near-term disruption, followed by opportunity,” Booz Allen CEO Horacio Rozanski said in an earnings call. “We now see that these dynamics are indeed in play, at a rate and speed that is beyond what we originally expected.”
Deviations in labor market trends
What concerns Indeed’s economist Stahle about the data related to job openings is how much government-contractor jobs have been impacted compared to the rest of the labor market. Since February 2024, job listings for positions at government contractors have plummeted 44%, according to the Indeed data, while all other listings have increased 14% since before COVID.
While the number of job openings have more broadly stabilized, the recent data indicates the trend of government-contractor job listings “is not changing the way the rest of the labor market is changing,” Stahle said.
“We’re starting to see a break in patterns, which I think is what’s most notable about this,” he added.
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Fewer job listings for these massive private-sector contractors may mean fewer opportunities for fired federal workers seeking news jobs, particularly as applications among this demographic soared in the spring as a result of DOGE’s mass workforce cuts. Most of these fired federal employees are knowledge workers looking for white-collar positions usually offered by government contractors, according to Stahle. Not only are fewer job openings available to these federal workers, but also to college students and young professionals entering the workforce.
“The broader labor market impact could be much larger than a 25-company series might indicate,” Stahle said. “We want to hit that soft landing we’ve been talking about for a couple years, and hopefully start to see things turn around. We don’t want to continue to go down forever.”
Written by Sasha Rogelberg for Fortune as “Job openings among the largest U.S. federal contractors have plummeted at 25x the rate of all other jobs amid DOGE cuts, report finds” and republished with permission.
