A young, brown woman with dark hair walks down a hallway in an office building. She is holding a box with her belongings, including some documents and a plant. She has been fired.
Image Credit: Jacob Wackerhausen on iStock

On the morning we spoke, Alexandra Avila had received another rejection email. She told me that more than 300 applicants were copied in the same rejection email. This isn’t the first time, either.

She recalled another position, a job with Washington state to study rockfish, the same species she researched during her PhD studies. “I thought I was perfect for this one job,” she said. And yet, she received an automatic email stating her application was not being considered and did not land an interview.

In past years and under a different administration, Avila would have been the perfect candidate. Close to a decade earlier, she was funded to study the very same species of fish. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—a federal agency—awarded her a four-year $180,000 scholarship to train as a marine scientist and research the recovery of this vital species to the Puget Sound ecosystem. Listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, yelloweye rockfish is a food source for both salmon and sea birds. Avila conducted her doctoral research in Washington state’s Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. When she was later hired by the sanctuary as its marine scientist, it felt, she said, “almost like a dream come true”—like “coming home.”

But just a few months into her new role, on February 27, 2025, she received an email that her skills—the same skills NOAA paid her to acquire—were “no longer necessary.” Avila was among thousands of probationary federal employees dismissed as part of the Donald Trump administration’s mass firings.

She had about an hour, maybe two, to clear her office.

Probationary employees are federal workers in their first or second year or employees who recently moved into a new role. This classification of employees makes them easier to fire than permanent employees. More than 25,000 probationary employees were among the roughly 300,000 federal workers fired last year.

In another instance, Christa Reynolds worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a contractor for eight years before joining the team full-time in May 2024. But she was fired nine months later, despite glowing reviews and appreciation. She was briefly reinstated after a court order, placed on administrative leave, and then fired again in May 2025.

A survey released by 27UNIHTED, the NIH Alumni Action Network, documents what happened to more than 300 workers and found things completely different to what President Trump claims.

Reynolds said she never received the paperwork normally given to employees after termination. Without it, she couldn’t determine how long her health insurance would last, whether she still had dental coverage, or even apply for unemployment benefits.

In September 2025, Christa Reynolds read a ruling by US District Judge William Alsup declaring the mass firing of probationary federal employees unlawful. Yet the judge declined to order their reinstatement, writing that many had “moved on with their lives and found new jobs.”

Yet Reynolds could not help but wonder: “Have you talked to any of us?”

In January of 2026 Trump said during a White House briefing, “We cut millions of people from the federal payroll. I don’t like doing that, but the good news is I don’t feel badly because now they’re getting private sector jobs, and they’re sometimes getting twice as much money, three times as much money.”

“Have Not Moved On”

A survey released by 27UNIHTED, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Alumni Action Network, documents what happened to more than 300 workers and found things completely different to what President Trump claims.

The survey found that 21 percent of respondents remained unemployed as of January 31, 2026. Another 7 percent had found only part-time work. Of those employed, 49 percent reported earning significantly lower salaries. Nearly 90 percent reported mental health consequences—depression, sleep disruption, trouble concentrating—that affected their daily lives.

Respondents came from 43 states and 14 agencies, including the NIH, the NOAA, the US Forest Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

To ensure that the participants are legitimate and not “trolls,” they used a “combination of personal outreach and organizational partnerships,” said Anna Culbertson, co-founder of 27UNIHTED, who spoke to NPQ. “We relied on our own contacts, as well as networks like OneAID and the National Public Health Coalition, to connect with participants.”

The survey was designed and analyzed by more than 40 volunteers, all former federal employees. Organizers framed the questions to raise awareness of the wide-ranging effects of the terminations on respondents. No demographic data like age, race, or gender identity was collected to ensure the respondents’ anonymity. And all questions were optional.

By the time Cole Donovan was dismissed from NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, he had already spent more than a decade in federal service, with tenure at the US State Department, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Science Foundation.

For some workers, the courts offered partial relief. A portion of fired probationary employees were reinstated after legal challenges. Of 157 respondents who had been reinstated, however, 115 said communication about the process was inadequate. Many returned to their desks without any sense of security.

About 82 percent of roughly 300 respondents reported no trust at all in top leadership at their former agency. “This lack of trust is indicative of damage that may persist beyond a single administration,” the surveyors noted.

Against the general perception that fired probationary employees were inexperienced, Cole Donovan, a former NOAA researcher, had at least a decade of experience in the federal government—a story that often repeated itself.

“Everyone knows we were fired,” Donovan said. “Nobody knows what happened next.”

By the time Donovan was dismissed from NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, he had already spent more than a decade in federal service, with tenure at the US State Department, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Science Foundation. His probationary status was simply due to changing agencies.

Donovan worked on international commercial space policy. “I was one of the few people who had extensive experience negotiating with the European Union,” he said. “It’s literally irreplaceable.”

Donovan didn’t anticipate the pace in which USAID evaporated. He is now a policy expert for Stand Up for Science, a political advocacy organization that works to defend and advance the US scientific ecosystem.

“I look at the changes that are happening in the federal government,” Donovan said. “I help explain to people the consequences of what’s happening.”

The survey seeks to document the long-term consequences of those dismissals before they fade from public memory.

The Livelihood of US Citizens

More than 80 percent of survey respondents held a master’s degree or higher. A third held doctorates. Basically, if they were fired, the work they did either stopped entirely or a smaller staff picked it up.

Roughly 240 of the respondents reported larger, sometimes unmanageable workloads. About 210 reported the loss of institutional knowledge. And 165 reported a decline in information tracking and reduced public services. Eventually, the trickle down came with public health programs being disrupted, a reduction of environmental monitoring, and conservation work largely stalled.

“There were seven federal employees and he [Avila’s boss] lost three people that were fired,” Avila explained. “The people who are left are doing the job of three people, trying to keep things afloat.”

Her own supervisor is acting as superintendent for three sanctuaries in total.

The Trump administration’s second term has reshaped the federal government. The mass firing of probationary employees gets overshadowed by broader political changes. The survey seeks to document the long-term consequences of those dismissals before they fade from public memory.

At the same time, the surveyors are aware of the limitations. This survey is a record, and a starting point for independent researchers to study what happened to the unlawfully terminated population. With time, they wish to collaborate with academic institutions to build a more robust evidence base of the impact, financially, professionally, psychologically, on former federal workers.

The survey recommends some policy solutions like back pay, proper documentation, extended health insurance to minimum of 24 months after the termination, and an end to mass firings based on employment status rather than individual performance.

The goal is that this public information can become the basis of further action.Avila now has a part-time position that involves similar work she once did for the state, although her federally funded research skills could be having a much wider impact. Still, it’s better than nothing: “Even though it’s just a few hours, it’s so great to be doing something that you love doing.”