The USAID employee traveled to Chicago from Washington, D.C., for the job fair.
Like almost all the employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development dismantled by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, he is on paid administrative leave.
“I don’t think there’s any way my job’s coming back,” the federal worker said in the bustling conference room at Malcolm X College in Chicago on Thursday.
A federal judge ruled this week that DOGE’s dismantling of the international development agency was likely unconstitutional and said the employees on leave should get their email access reinstated, but appeared to stop short of calling for the agency, which has been effectively shut down, to fully reopen for business.
Like many of the job seekers who agreed to be interviewed at the fair, the USAID employee declined to be identified by the Tribune. The career fair was hosted by the state of Illinois and targeted at former federal employees, although it was open to all those hunting for work in the public sector.
Almost 90,000 federal employees live in Illinois, according to estimates by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. At the job fair, some of those workers spoke to the chaos and confusion the DOGE cuts had wrought on their agencies, themselves and their families.
Some were in limbo, awaiting further news on their fate while on paid leave. Other federal employees still had jobs, but feared they wouldn’t after future cuts. Workers said the DOGE slashings have taken not just a financial toll, but a mental one.
“It sucks to be the punching bag,” said a man who identified himself as a current IRS employee.
The USAID employee bought a home in Washington last year, and said his wife is pregnant. He feels he might not have a choice but to move back to the Chicago area, where he went to college and where he and his wife have family.
“Honestly,” he said, “we might have to end up living in my in-laws’ basement.”
He warned that while federal employees and their families are bearing the brunt of DOGE’s pledge to reduce government spending and root out what it describes as waste, everyday Americans will soon feel the cuts when they realize the extent to which they rely on government services.
“Eventually this impacts everyone,” he said.
More than a dozen Illinois state agencies, including the departments of agriculture, public health and veterans affairs set up shop at the job fair.
Raven DeVaughn, director of the state’s Department of Central Management Services, had a simple message for the 700 job seekers who attended the fair: “Civil service is an important and respected profession in Illinois,” she said. “We’re hiring.”
The department did not know how many of the job seekers were current or former federal employees, a spokesperson said.
In response to a question about the USAID ruling, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that the Trump administration would appeal it and that “rogue judges are subverting the will of the American people in their attempts to stop President Trump from carrying out his agenda.”
“If these Judges want to force their partisan ideologies across the government, they should run for office themselves,” Kelly wrote.
A Chicago-based Internal Revenue Service employee told the Tribune he left a private sector job to work for the agency less than a year ago, taking a pay cut.
“I wanted to align myself with an organization that is not solely driven by profit,” he said. “What I do, I make sure that people’s retirement plans are protected.”
But the IRS staffer was with the agency for only eight months before he was fired in February, along with thousands of other IRS employees, as part of the broad cuts to probationary employees across the federal government. Last week, a federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands of fired probationary employees across the federal workforce.
The Chicago IRS employee has since been put on paid leave in a reversal of his initial firing, but said he hadn’t been invited back to work.
Regarding the firings of probationary employees, Kelly said Trump was “rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse across the Executive Branch, which includes removing probationary employees who are not mission-critical.”
A man who said he is still working for the IRS in the Chicago area said he’d been applying for other jobs. He declined to share his name with the Tribune.
“Morale is destroyed,” he said. “And it kills productivity, because all you’re doing is kind of waiting to figure out what happens next.”
Jonathan Bassett, 32, said he was laid off from his job with a federal contractor working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He helped farmers get funding in exchange for undertaking conservation projects.
“After 6 ½ years, I reviewed $18.7 million in funds for farmers,” he said. “Sometimes, these farmers are really struggling, not only financially but mentally, so it’s very rewarding knowing that I could be a part of these changes.”
Some job seekers who had never worked for the federal government said they believed the Trump administration’s cuts have had a downstream impact on their job searches, both in the public and private sectors.
Chicago resident Olivia Gahan, who has been job hunting for two months, said they had noticed a slowdown in nonprofit job postings. “If their clients don’t get paid, then they don’t have clients, and, therefore, their business model doesn’t work,” said Gahan, 31.
Job seeker Jack Werner, 25, who has previously worked in higher education admissions and recruitment, said he used to want to work for the federal government, particularly in the Department of Education.
Hours later, Trump signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the agency. “It’s definitely put a damper on my career aspirations,” Werner said.
