The first six weeks of the new Trump administration have been fraught with uncertainty, mass layoffs and the imposition of trade tariffs on partners like Canada and Mexico.
That’s dinged consumer sentiment in Utah, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. February’s 3.5% dip versus January can be credited to “expectations and uncertainty about family finances and business conditions,” the institute said in a statement.
Northern Utah, and specifically the 1st Congressional District, is home to Hill Air Force Base and thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees. It has the state’s highest concentration of federal employees compared to the three other districts.
The potential for large-scale federal layoffs has leaders like North Ogden Mayor Neal Berube worried about the broader economic impact.
“It is just not the people that are going to be let go. It's the uncertainty,” he said at a March 3 Weber Area Council of Governments meeting. “And some of the business owners I've talked to, they're saying their business is just almost drying up because of the uncertainties.”
Ten percent of non-farm workers in Davis County and 6.8% in Weber County are employed by the federal government, according to a report from the Gardner Institute.
During the meeting, Colonel Daniel Cornelius, commander of Hill AFB, said there are about 1,000 probationary employees on the base, most of whom are in their first year on the job.
“There's the potential that they may all be given pink slips, essentially,” he said, noting almost the entire civilian workforce, roughly 16,000 or 17,000 people, received the Fork in the Road letter. “There's a couple other things going on that may cause several hundred well-qualified and highly experienced members of our installation to be available for work in the near term.”
Probationary employees, often in the first year of their position, were the first to be let go from many government agencies as part of the Trump administration’s push to shrink the federal government. The government’s Office of Personnel Management has since revised a memo to state that agencies have discretion in firing employees.
Roy Mayor Robert Dandoy is worried the layoffs could lead some employees to retire.
“It’s not just taking care of the people [who are laid off], but also being ready to deal with what could be an economic impact to all of us.”
Roughly 100 IRS employees in Ogden have already been laid off.
“Couple that with the IRS side that we're already seeing,” Dandoy said. “The impacts could be significant.”
At a Feb. 25 town hall, Blake Moore, the Republican representative of the 1st District and co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, said he was frustrated with the administration’s treatment of federal workers.
The president of the local treasury workers’ union told reporters hundreds of additional IRS employees are expected to be laid off later this spring. Nationwide, the IRS is considering cutting its workforce in half, according to the Associated Press.
Beyond layoffs, the future of the IRS in Ogden is uncertain.
The General Services Administration, the agency of the federal government that owns the Hansen Federal Building, announced in December it will be transferred, exchanged or sold to another owner. Ogden’s main IRS Service Center was also identified as a property to be potentially closed or sold on a list that has since been removed by the administration.
The effects of mass layoffs would be spread throughout the area, noted Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski. Roughly 50,000 people commute to Ogden for work, according to a city spokesperson.
“We can't control the decisions that are made in D.C. The only thing we control is how we respond and how we prepare,” Nadolski said.
Ogden is collaborating with the Ogden-Weber Technical College and the state Department of Workforce Services to help workers find new stable jobs, according to a Feb. 21 release from the city. They encourage laid-off employees to attend a statewide job fair on March 6.
“This is certainly a challenge for us,” Nadolski said. “If you're one of those families or people that are affected, it's an enormous life challenge.”
The good news, according to Weber State University associate economics professor Andrew Keinsley, is federal workers make up a smaller portion of the Ogden-Clearfield Metropolitan Area than they used to.
In an area that includes Weber, Davis, Morgan and Box Elder counties, the number of federal employees is similar to what it was in 1990. But the region’s economy has grown, meaning federal workers made up 7.6% of the workforce as of December, down from almost 17% in 1990, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
“If there was a silver lining to all of this, it's that the Ogden-Clearfield area has had so much momentum lately that we're better off than a lot of other areas who might be looking at some of these similar situations,” Keinsley said.
He added the economic impact would depend on how many people are laid off and how quickly they find jobs that match their skills. The metro area’s unemployment rate is 2.9%, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The IRS employs about 2% of the Ogden-Clearfield workforce. If it cut half of its employees, that would eliminate 1% of the area’s jobs.
“[For] a local economy that's growing in the 4-5% range, that's a significant drop in that momentum,” Keinsley said, noting a 1% decrease in an area’s employment level correlates with a roughly 0.6% decrease in GDP growth.
He said people who are laid off — or fear losing their jobs — may limit their spending. That pullback would be felt by local shops, restaurants and businesses. This is the impact that worries mayors Berube and Dandoy.
“Business owners might also suddenly worry and say, ‘Our expectations of future sales are taking a hit right now, so we're not going to restock as much inventory, maybe we'll slow down our hiring,’” Keinsley said.
Those spillover effects may be even more pronounced if there are significant cuts to the Department of Defense.
“Not only would that cut back on money, private sector jobs within the base, and people who are working there, but also potentially cutting back on contracts by large tech companies that we have in this area.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
