'We have to try lifting ourselves': USAID workers fired months ago are still scrambling for jobs
They were among the first of the federal employees to lose their jobs, and months later, laid off workers for the U.S. Agency for International Development are still struggling to regain their footing.
Wayan Vota, who spent decades improving technology across developing countries, created a Substack site to help his former colleagues search for new jobs. But he doesn't have one himself.
Sara Gopalan, who worked as a USAID-implementing partner staffer for 20 years, surveyed nearly 100 other humanitarian aid workers who, like her, are currently searching for new employment.
Roughly 95% said they had lost savings and retirement funds, 60% lost access to health care, and 37% have already lost their housing. Many said they will have trouble paying their bills in the coming months.
"The job market is now flooded with these highly-skilled professionals, many of whom have dedicated 10, 20, 30, or even 40 years to international development work," said Gopalan, of Rockville, Maryland, who has applied for more than a dozen jobs. "The burden of pivoting after, say 30 years, feels insurmountable and weighs heavily on their heart."
The former aid workers also reported experiencing anxiety, depression, grief, stress, and even shame. It wasn't just the loss of a job, Gopalan said, it was the destruction of their career and their life’s passion.
Those feelings resonate with Lindsay Alemi, a contracted worker who lost her job in March.
"I worked through three administrations and worked through all of the ebbs and flows, as we helped some of the poorest regions in the world," said Alemi, 39, who also lives in Silver Spring.
"To have done everything as a good Samaritan your whole life and then to see people call USAID a scam and a fraud, is gut-wrenching," said Alemi, who has done humanitarian work since she was in college. "This is more than just a job for us, this is a calling."
Federal aid misunderstanding
Billionaire and top Trump adviser Elon Musk called USAID a "criminal organization" earlier this year, without providing evidence, saying it was "time for it to die."
The aid organization was the first target in the massive cuts that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made across the federal government in what he calls an attack on wasteful spending.
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates slammed Musk and the administration for the USAID cutbacks, saying they would lead to the death of millions of children around the world. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said in an early May interview with the Financial Times.
And though Americans like to complain about how many of their tax dollars support the rest of the world, nearly 9 in 10 Americans (86%) overestimate how much of the federal budget goes to international aid, according to a March poll by KFF, a health policy research and news organization.
USAID comprises less than 1% of the U.S. federal budget, roughly $40 billion a year. About $1 for every $167 the government allocates is used for foreign aid. For decades, USAID has had bipartisan support in Congress because it built good-will for the United States abroad, helped combat infectious diseases that might spread here, and prevented local problems from becoming global ones.
The KFF poll found that two-thirds of Americans agree with Gates that eliminating USAID will lead to more illness and death globally, but almost half (47%) believe that dissolving it will reduce the deficit and help fund domestic programs.
Of those surveyed in the poll, many Americans initially believed the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid. But when they were informed that foreign aid accounts for a tiny percentage of spending, that percentage dropped to 50% among Republicans, 39% among independents, and just 15% among Democrats.
"We live in the largest country that is willing and wants to support others; there’s a moral obligation to lift those less fortunate," Vota said. "Now, we have to try lifting ourselves."
Job hunting after USAID
Vota had been working as a senior digital management adviser in a role primarily funded by USAID. For two decades, he'd worked to improve technology across Africa and Asia, including in Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Indonesia.
Now 52, Vota told Paste BN he was recently passed over for a private sector tech job because, despite his time in "crazy" cities like Jakarta, he was told they doubted he could keep up with the pace.
Another hiring manager near his Chapel Hill, North Carolina home worried Vota wouldn't be a good salesman, though Vota let him know: "I have convinced adult men in Tanzania to go for voluntary medical circumcision, and I increased our rate of circumcision by 50% …If I can convince grown men to get circumcised, I think I can sell plumbing supplies in North Carolina."
He didn't get the job.
The Substack site Vota created the day after he was laid off, called Career Pivot, helps his former USAID colleagues update their resumes and actively search for new jobs.
The free site features job listings as well as mental health resources, discussion boards, and networking events. A major emphasis of Career Pivot is helping former federal employees and contractors translate their skills into terms the private sector understands.
The site has more than 12,000 subscribers, he said, many of whom are mid-to-senior-level staffers who have spent the majority of their professional lives in the international development field.
"There are thousands of humanitarian workers with deep, rich, beautiful experiences who are self-motivated and dedicated, who are struggling to define their value to private sector employers who speak a completely different language," said Vota, comparing the site to a startup which now also helps former federal employees from other agencies.
Struggling to 'do less good' in the world
Gopalan, 42, a married mother of three kids, is among those using Career Pivot. She has spent more than 20 years working as a USAID-implementing partner staffer for five organizations. Gopalan monitored, evaluated, and created policies for USAID-funded programming for developing countries. Her job ends June 30.
Gopalan said, according to USAID Stop-Work, a coalition including current and former USAID-related employees and other supporters, nearly 177,000 jobs have been lost among governments and institutions involved in global assistance.
"Whether these are American federal workers or those who receive USAID funding, the dismantling has been done so chaotically, it has caused such irreparable damage, and is so unnecessary to do to public servants," Nidhi Bouri, USAID's former deputy assistant administrator for Global Health, told Paste BN.
Many of the displaced humanitarian workers are suffering from "layoff trauma," said Dr. Anne Justus, an American Clinical Psychologist living and working in Cairo since 2007. The sudden loss of a job that is appreciated worldwide, but demeaned by many in their homeland, is devastating, Justus said.
"These people are certainly not doing it to be wealthy; they truly want to do global community building, and the ripple effect is widespread and enormous," said Justus, who recently gave a presentation to Vota's Career Pivot members. "They are not even sure about where they are going next."
Whatever jobs the former humanitarian workers may hold going forward, it might not compare to the impactful work they did, said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow for the Center for Global Development. He said those workers who were let go in similar shuttering agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, are facing similar circumstances.
"These are smart, enterprising and driven people, and some will find jobs they like a lot less because it might mean doing a lot less good in the world," Kenny said. "I hope they will find them rewarding in whatever capacity."
Open to career change
As a project manager for a USAID-funded nonprofit, Alemi worked to prevent malnutrition and starvation in Zimbabwe and Madagascar. Her programs spent tens of millions of tax dollars buying crops grown in America ‒ which now may not have a buyer, harming Americans as well as Africans, she said.
Alemi has applied for about 30 jobs, but other than a few rejections, she's heard nothing. The mother and stepmother of four kids said she's getting worried she might lose the home she and her partner bought in 2021 with a 3% mortgage interest rate, less than half the national average.
"No good news yet," Alemi said. "There’s nowhere to go for everybody in our sector, so you may have to be open to making an entire career change."
Still, Alemi, Gopalan and Vota say they remain optimistic.
"My dream is that I hope I can get a job by the end of summer," said Vota, who on May 19 started a new job in the humanitarian space. "I hope others can find work, too."