Trump's Federal Hiring Freeze Could Impact Wildland Firefighting Force

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In California, where more than 147,000 federal civilian employees worked last year, President Donald Trump’s hiring pause will likely have a big impact on the federal government’s ability to provide services, labor groups said.

One area of concern is how the hiring freeze could impact the federal government’s ability to hire and support its seasonal wildland firefighting workforce.

“If you’re saying no to the people that make the system work, whether it’s hiring officials in Albuquerque or the human resources department, will things be delayed?” said Luke Mayfield, president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a national advocacy group for federal employees..

Trump’s Monday executive order, which was similar to a hiring freeze he put in place eight years ago during his first term, includes some exceptions for positions related to immigration enforcement, national security and public safety. It wasn’t clear which positions within the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees federal fire fighting efforts, could be exempt from the hiring freeze.

The Forest Service employed more than 5,600 employees in California in 2024, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

“USDA is reviewing all the Executive Orders signed by President Trump and expects to share guidance on implementing them to agencies and mission areas as soon as possible,” said Scott Owen, a spokesperson with the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management did not respond to requests for comment.

The majority of other California-based federal employees work for the Navy and the Department of Veteran Affairs, the OPM reported. The executive order does not apply to military personnel. Additionally, the order stated “nothing in this memorandum shall adversely impact the provision of Social Security, Medicare, or Veterans’ benefits.”

Labor groups that represent federal employees said one effect of a broad hiring freeze will be less efficiency in governmental operations.

While the U.S.’s population has grown 57% in the past half century, the number of federal workers has increased by 6%, the American Federation of Government Employees said in a Monday statement. Instead of hiring more federal employees, the government has increased the budget for private contractors, said the union that represents over 800,000 government workers.

“Make no mistake – this action is not about making the federal government run more efficiently but rather is about sowing chaos and targeting a group of patriotic Americans,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley.

The ‘long process’ of hiring

The federal government’s wildland firefighting forces in California already face a steep workforce shortage. Last year, ProPublica reported 35% of wildland firefighting jobs in the state were vacant.

Mayfield said the shortage of federal firefighters is due to low pay and limited career opportunities. As state and local fire agencies have increased salaries for their forces in recent years, federal firefighters have been leaving their jobs for better pay.

Maximo Alonzo, the national secretary-treasurer of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said Trump’s order may not directly stop the Forest Service from hiring wildland firefighters. But he noted the effects of a hiring freeze on land management agencies would impede the federal government’s ability to support firefighters on the ground.

“If we’re cutting any positions, that’s a bad thing,” Alonzo said. “I mean, just to support the wildland fire efforts ...we need as many hands on deck as we can get right now.”

Michael Shires, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Austin, said he expects the firefighters fall under the public safety exemption of the hiring freeze. Additionally, he pointed to a line in the executive order that stated the new administration would honor existing collective bargaining agreements with unions representing federal employee.

Not all Forest Service employees are represented by unions. Over a quarter of the Forest Service’s nearly 34,000 employees are ineligible to join a bargaining unit, according to OPM’s federal workforce data.

When Trump issued a hiring freeze in 2017, Mayfield was the captain of a federal firefighting crew. He said he doesn’t remember it impacting operations at the time, but he has concerns that this hiring freeze could hinder the federal government’s ability to efficiently bring on seasonal workers.

While much of the firefighting workforce won’t show up until April, the hiring effort to recruit seasonal, temporary and permanent employees to help the Forest Service fight fires during the busiest months of the season, which could begin as early as March, is a “long process,” Mayfield said.

The human resource officials and hiring managers who are responsible for making this system work could be impacted by the hiring freeze, Mayfield said.

Which prompted Mayfield to wonder: “Will it further impact the ability to recruit and retain a fluid and flexible federal wildland workforce that potentially impacts the heart of the 2025 fire year?”

Trump’s priorities

The effects of the hiring freeze will be felt broadly across California as services provided by the federal government are impacted by staffing vacancies going unfilled, said Ken Jacobs of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Staffing at national parks in California, enforcement of Department of Labor standards, agricultural and environmental inspections could all be impacted, Jacobs said.

The broad nature of the order, which exempts some agencies but doesn’t target specific programs, isn’t strategic, Jacobs noted. If a key position that makes other employees function remains unfilled, he said, the ability to carry out work is inefficient.

“If your objective is to make federal programs not function, then this is a way to meet that objective,” Jacobs said.

Shires said the freeze is a way for the administration to signal areas it wants more federal control.

“Overall, the administration will be funding its priorities and not filling positions in areas that do not reflect those priorities,” Shires said.

Those priorities include immigration and border security, he notes, so agencies related to those issues would likely see full, or extra staffing. Hiring in other areas, such as environmental regulation and enforcement, will likely be frozen until the Office of Management and Budget releases its plan to reduce the number of federal employees.

The executive order directed the OMB to work with OPM and the newly created Department of Government Efficiency to create a plan to shrink the federal workforce through attrition and “efficiency improvements.”

Mayfield noted it wasn’t yet clear what those reductions will look like for federal employees who work in emergency services. He said if federal leaders want to make the government more efficient, they also need to consider how to support the health and wellbeing of emergency responders.

“The right people need to be driving those conversations,” he said. “It can’t be done from a glass castle 3,000 miles away.”

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