Report: Federal Job Cuts Having Disproportionate Effect on Women and Minorities

According to a new report from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), women and people of color have been disproportionately affected by recent cuts across the federal workforce.

The federal upheaval of recent months “particularly harms” women and minorities “by eliminating jobs that provide greater stability, benefits and pay equity relative to jobs across all industries,” according to a NWLC statement summarizing the report’s key findings.

In its report, NWLC noted that, in March 2025, the Trump administration removed current and historic diversity data, including race and ethnicity indicators for the federal workforce, from the Office of Personnel Management’s main public data website. NWLC conducted its analysis using saved data on file that reflects the federal workforce as of September 2024.

The non-profit’s study of that data found that women comprised 46% of the total federal workforce in September 2024. However, the report finds women representing “a substantial majority of the workforce” in five Cabinet-level departments that have been targeted for large-scale layoffs: the Department of Veterans Affairs (64%), the Department of Education (63%), the Department of Health and Human Services (52%), the Department of the Treasury (61%), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (59%).

The report noted that people of color made up 41% of the overall federal workforce in September 2024, but they made up a majority of workers in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (56%), the Department of Education (54%), Treasury (54%) and Health and Human Services (52%). Black workers make up 36% of the workforce in both the Department of Education and HUD, which is double their representation in the overall federal workforce (18%).

In addition, Latino workers made up 11% of the entire federal workforce, but 23% of the workers in the Department of Homeland Security, 15% of the workers in the Department of the Treasury, and 13% of the workers in the Department of Labor.

The stability, advancement opportunities, benefits and union representation that federal jobs offer “have long provided a path to the middle class” for Black workers, women and others, said Sarah Javaid, author of the report and senior research analyst at NWLC, in a statement.

Ongoing reductions in the federal workforce are “an attack on economic opportunities and the progress this country has made in leveling the playing field,” Javaid added. “These rapid, large-scale cuts and terminations disproportionately harm women and people of color.”