Question 1: How many federal employees are in Texas, and where are they working?

 

As of September there were 13​0,686 federal employees working in Texas.

 

Department Of Veterans Affairs	37,836
Department Of Treasury/Internal Revenue Service	10,311
Department Of Transportation	4,510
Department Of Homeland Security	4,485
Department Of Agriculture	4,238
Social Security Administration	3,276
National Aeronautics And Space Administration	3,083

 

Aside from the post offices spread all across the state, there are more federal employees in Harris County (15,104) than anywhere else. Dallas County is second (13,421) and Austin and the rest of Travis County is a distant third (8,876).

 

Question 2: How much money are these federal employees making?

 

We have payroll info for nearly all of them (129,961). They earn a total of $11.6 billion.

 

45 people make as much/more than the president ($400,000).

 

The doctors are unsurprisingly getting paid the most. Of the top 1000 highest paid, 977 work in the Veterans Health Administration.

 

There’s also 1,942 IRS employees that make $100,000 or more. 600 IRS employees are already set to be laid off in Texas.

Question 3: Is it going to be difficult for Austin to rehire these employees?

 

Austin employs 16,000 full-time and temporary workers with 2,400 vacancies.

 

 

But that’s not the case here. Federal employees in Texas make less than the average full-time City of Austin worker. So if the city wants to rehire federal workers, there’s a good chance they’ll be able to offer them a pay raise instead of asking them to take a pay cut.

 

Average Texas federal worker: $89,042

Average federal worker nationwide: $106,382.

Average City of Austin worker: $95,751

 

Question 4: Which other cities are looking to hire laid off federal workers?

San Antonio’s mayor and city council have said they want to simplify the city hiring process for laid off federal workers.

 

But outside of Texas, it’s mostly state governments that have made these announcements. Maryland, New York, Hawaii, Pennsylvania.

 

Texas is going to have a really interesting dynamic because the Republican-led state government is aligning itself with Trump. Lawmakers have created the Texas DOGE committee that’s trying to downsize the state government. But large cities like Austin that lean to the left are trying to increase the size of their governments.