President Donald Trump has upended Ardena Githara’s career twice.

Her job as a grant manager for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was eliminated in 2019. She returned to the federal workforce as a program manager at the Federal Aviation Administration, only to be put on leave from that job in February.

Too young to retire and too invested to pursue a new career, Githara, a 51-year-old Rosedale resident, said she is in a “scary” position.

“This is when I should be down-sloping,” said Githara, who was born and raised in the Baltimore area. “They are going to look for someone a lot younger. I’m really afraid right now.”

For the better part of a century, Black people have seen working for the U.S. government as a reliable career path that comes with fairer hiring practices, good pay and benefits and opportunities for career mobility and advancement.

The Trump administration’s slashing of the federal workforce, carried out by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is likely to disproportionately affect Black people, who hold a higher percentage of civil service jobs than in other parts of the economy.

About 18.6% of the federal workforce is Black, compared to about 12.8% of the overall civilian workforce, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Social Security Administration, based in Woodlawn, is the largest federal employer in the Baltimore region. About 31% of the agency’s employees are Black, according to its annual report.

Federal jobs have helped fuel the middle class and create generational wealth, historians and economists said. That’s especially evident in the Baltimore region, where about 100,000 federal employees live.

In Baltimore and Baltimore County, Black full-time federal workers earn a median income about $30,000 higher than other Black workers, according to an analysis by The Baltimore Banner of individual-level U.S. Census data available through IPUMS.

As federal employees, Black Baltimoreans without a college education earn a median full-time wage of $70,000, compared to $44,000 for other Black workers without a college education, the analysis shows.

Baltimore officials say the average salary for federal employees who live in the city is $103,000, noting that finding comparable pay could prove difficult. The prospect of federal job cuts has inspired worry at City Hall about a shrinking income tax base — and a hit to property taxes if unemployed federal workers leave to find employment elsewhere.

“The government is very hard to get in, but once you get in, you stay in,” Githara said. She worked for the federal government for 17 years, after a stint in the private sector.

Dr. Ray Winbush, director for The Institute of Urban Research at Morgan State University, said federal jobs have been a “gateway” to the Black middle class in Maryland — dating back to work for the United States Post Office in the 1920s.

“Those jobs were predictable, steady, and they were on merit,” he said, adding that the tests required to keep these jobs ensured that employees were qualified. “They could never be questioned about, ‘Are you qualified.’ ”

“It’s more than a coincidence that Trump said, ‘Let’s cut back federal workers,‘” Winbush said. “It disproportionally impacts Black people.”

The Trump administration said its reshaping of the federal government is aimed at eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Mayor Brandon Scott said federal jobs have been vital in building Baltimore’s Black middle class, providing one of the most “reliable pathways to the middle class for Black workers, providing good wages, benefits, and a path to homeownership and generational wealth.”

Federal workforce cuts combined with the private-sector rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts risks “widening racial economic disparities and undermining hard-fought gains toward Black wealth,” Scott said.

The mayor’s office hosted a job fair last month for federal workers in the Baltimore area. Nearly 600 people attended.

The packed parking lot of New Psalmist Baptist Church in Northwest Baltimore had the feel of a Sunday service at the mega church — both the main and auxiliary parking lots were lined with vehicles. Cars spilled over onto the street, where traffic guards directed visitors into spaces that surrounded the hulking beige-steepled edifice.

Tia Hopkins, who was recruiting for Baltimore public schools, said just looking at the attendees at the job fair proved who was being affected the most by Trump’s cuts to federal workers.

“You see what’s here?” Hopkins said, pointing to the sea of Black applicants making their way from booth to booth, many dressed in business attire. “There are a lot of middle-class African American people here.”

Hopkins said Trump’s cuts couldn’t come at a worse time.

“The market is not creating more jobs,” Hopkins said. “It’s so competitive now.”

Hopkins said she particularly felt bad for career federal employees who are in their 50s.

“People with 20 or 30 years of experience are competing for jobs meant for people with five years of experience,” Hopkins said. “They are all out here at the same time looking for jobs. It’s really unfortunate.”

Two booths away at the city’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights, applicants lined up throughout the day. Two hours into the job fair, the booth had more than four pages’ worth of applicants signed up for interviews.

Most of the federal workers interviewed by The Banner at the job fair asked for anonymity out of fear of being targeted by the Trump administration.

Two cited their age as a concern for future employment. Another federal worker said this latest blow, coming after the 2008 recession and Trump’s first administration, will wipe out most of the savings and potential wealth she could pass down to her children.

All agreed that the cuts to federal jobs would have an overall negative outcome for Black people and the generational strides they have achieved.

Job fair attendee Halima Oden, 49, called losing the Department of Defense job she held for the last 10 years “devastating.” But the Park Heights resident said she was trying to stay positive and keep the faith.

“It’s strategic,” said a 45-year-old Harford County resident who is a federal worker in Northern Virginia but declined to be identified out of fear of retaliation. “They’re not dumb. It’s been mostly Black and brown people.”

Githara, whose position will officially be eliminated at the end of this month, said she will be forever changed by this experience — even if she somehow stays in the federal workforce.

“I will never be the same employee,” she said, recalling all the times she worked longer than what was expected of her because she enjoyed the work she was doing. “I will definitely give the federal government only eight hours.”