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The Internal Revenue Service is — once again — on a hiring spree. The agency wants to fill 850 jobs in Ogden and is holding events June 22 and 23.
Even if it fills every position, there will be fewer staff than when President Donald Trump returned to office and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, took a knife to the agency.
On the whole, Utah’s federal civilian workforce was 11% smaller in April 2026 than it was in January 2025, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services. Data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management show the Department of the Treasury felt the largest loss. It’s down 1,660 workers, or 20%.
All but a handful of Treasury employees in Utah work for the Internal Revenue Service, which has a processing center in Ogden and, as of 2024, was Weber County’s largest employer.
Robert Lawrence, speaking as president of the local chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the IRS needs the new employees. But he said the hires wouldn’t be necessary if the agency hadn’t cut more than 20,000 workers nationwide.
“I'm a professional, so I can't really say how I feel about it, but I think the professional term I'd like to use is completely inefficient and a waste of money and time,” he said.
Now, he said, the government will have to invest in training new people, and there’s a loss of institutional knowledge. And in the meantime, the remaining staff are shorthanded.
“The tax returns are backing up like crazy right now, and they've had to pull people, like from our IT departments and our HR departments, people who don't do taxes, they're having to train them on, to do taxes,” he said.
Beyond that, to keep people at their desks, he said, higher-ups are denying medical requests to work from home and not letting people take leave they’ve earned.
“The IRS is having to do what they feel like they can do to get people to stay and work, but it's a very toxic environment,” he said.
Some workers are afraid to leave the building to get lunch at local restaurants or are nervous to spend money at all because they’re worried about losing their jobs. Many of those who retired or took buyouts still haven’t gotten paychecks, Lawrence said.
He sees all of that as having a negative impact on the economy.
After the Treasury, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior lost the most Utah employees, though on a much smaller scale, between about 140 and 250 at each agency.
Nate Lloyd, director of economic research at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, said it’s true the state feels an outsized impact when federal jobs are cut because a larger-than-average percentage of its workforce is civilians in the federal government.
“Not only does it hurt them, but it hurts our economy, because they might have to move out of state to find a new job,” he said. “And maybe some of them found something here and stayed, but even then, they might have found something that's lower-paying.”
On average, federal government jobs pay about $19,000 more per year than private sector ones in Utah, according to the Gardner Institute.
Those who stay and struggle to find work might have a hard time paying their rent or utilities, and they might cut spending at local restaurants and stores. But the impacts are unlikely to be noticed beyond that, Lloyd said, in part because other sectors have grown enough that Utah’s economy is still adding jobs.
And the impact isn’t evenly spread, Lloyd said, because more federal cuts occurred in some parts of the state than others. Weber County had the most federal workers leave their jobs, followed by Salt Lake County.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
