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- BI spoke to federally employed military spouses about how mass firings have impacted them.
- They said the changes, which one called ‘psychological warfare,’ have scrambled familial planning.
- Of employed military spouses, 27% work for the federal government, compared to 2% of Americans.
When Cassandra Ramsey first arrived at a US Army base in Wiesbaden, Germany, in October, she met with the employment readiness office. An employee said she’d get a federal government job, no problem.
And Ramsey, 27, did get a job. On February 25 she received an offer to work as a substitute teacher through the Department of Defense Education Activity. By March 6, four days before she was meant to step into the classroom, the job was put on hold because of efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration and the White House DOGE office to shrink the federal workforce.
Ramsey is one of many federally employed — or, for some, formerly federally employed — military spouses who have been affected by DOGE’s efforts, like the firings and return-to-office mandates. BI spoke to four recently fired and current federally employed military spouses about how the changes are impacting military families, whose lives are often defined by frequent moves.
Though the federal government is typically thought of as a more stable work option for military spouses, the early weeks of Trump’s second term have upended that idea — for those BI spoke with, this time has been “disheartening” and “disconcerting.”
The unemployment rate for military spouses is more than five times than the national average, at 21%, according to a December 2024 report from the Department of Labor. Of those employed, about 27% work for the federal government, compared to around 2% of Americans overall, the report found.
Trump’s administration has made efforts to protect military families from some of the recent changes to the federal workforce, like when the Office of Management and Budget put out a memo in February exempting military spouses on remote work agreements from a return to office mandate. The families BI spoke with, however, said the rollout has been shaky, leaving their lives in a state of uncertainty.
The White House did not respond to BI’s request for comment.
Federal employment is typically attractive for military spouses
When Ramsey and her husband, an air traffic controller, moved to Germany for their first permanent change of station, she knew it would be hard to find a job. However, federal employment seemed like a viable option, especially because the government gives military spouses certain preferences in the hiring process.
“They encourage military spouses to work for the federal government because all their jobs are specifically transferable. They encourage them so much that they have people stationed at every friggin’ base to help you write your friggin’ resume,” Ramsey told BI in early March. She only applied for federal jobs when arriving in Germany, and though her job offer is still technically valid, it’s on hold indefinitely.
Emmalee Gruesen, 39, became a government contractor in 2008 and a civil servant in 2015. She met her husband while they were both working in Washington, DC — he bummed a ride from her to work — and is used to moving often. Her family relocated three times in three years and has lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, for the past year and a half. She’s currently on a remote work agreement and the arrangement has allowed her to maintain a career.
“A lot of people talk about service. For me, it’s not a matter of service. It’s a matter of convenience,” Gruesen told BI. She said she considered looking for a job in the private sector last year, but didn’t mainly because she wasn’t sure it would work well with her husband’s career.
A government contractor for the Department of Veterans Affairs who was fired at the end of February said working in the private sector as a military spouse is challenging because you have to start over with every move. The contractor, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said contracting gave her the flexibility and financial stability that suited her family’s lifestyle.
Now out of a job, both she and Ramsey independently told BI that they’re done working for the federal government.
“I’m done. I’m tapped out. I don’t give a sh—,” Ramsey said. “The benefits are not worth it for me.”
Changes that feel like ‘psychological warfare’
Gruesen is still on a remote work agreement, as is allowed under OPM’s memo exempting military spouses from returning to the office. Yet she said that a senior executive in the Navy told her in a meeting she might have to report to a Defense Department facility near her, though she hasn’t heard that from other managers.
“Common sense has left the building in implementation,” Gruesen said of the OPM memos. A swing voter who has supported both parties, she blames agency leadership more than Trump for the confusion.
Yet not all military spouses can benefit from the remote work exemption as outlined in February’s memo: some employees on telework agreements have been called back to the office five days a week, including a DC-based DoD employee whose husband is in the Marines and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. BI has verified her identity.
She said she only accepted her current job because it was eligible for telework, with two days a week in person. Now, she said she is being asked to be back in the office full time starting April 2, because OPM’s memo applies to remote workers, not teleworkers.
She asked if she could be converted to a remote employee and keep working three days from home. She wrote a letter, reviewed by BI, asking for an exemption. So far, nothing has worked.
“Being able to work from home three days a week has saved us tremendously. It saved us money. It’s saved us time. It’s kind of allowed us still to have our marriage,” she said.
A solid 62 miles away from her office, she spends between three and four hours commuting each day, leaving the house at 5:45 am and coming home after 6:00 pm. On those days, “it’s like I’m a robot,” she said. Her husband has to leave his job at the marines early to pick up their daughter from daycare, and he’ll have to do so every weekday come April.
With the federal hiring freeze, she can’t apply for other jobs closer to her home. The series of changes has felt to her like “psychological warfare.”
“The federal government has been kind of like stability in our life. It’s been like the one stability. But right now it’s not,” she said.
Family and financial planning upended
Though OPM’s memo protects some military spouses from return-to-office mandates, it doesn’t spare them from the reductions in force, or RIFs, that are coming across agencies.
The DoD employee’s husband is up for a promotion, and if he gets it he’ll be gone for six months. Assuming she still has a job at that point and can’t keep teleworking, she said she will likely have to take leave without pay so that she doesn’t have a gap in service.
She and her husband have started talking about what will happen if she gets fired — they’ll probably leave Maryland, with its high prices, and move back home to the midwest. She said her husband, a marine with 10 years of service, doesn’t know what to make of the federal government’s recent moves.
“He just feels like, you’re not supporting me when I’m here to support America and American families. But no one is supporting my family,” she said.
Gruesen is also preparing for a RIF — most of her coworkers have more government experience than she does, despite her having been a civil servant for 10 years. If she’s fired, she said she and her two sons will likely move into her mom’s 1,691 square-foot home in California. They’d move out of their $3,000/month rental in Charlottesville, and her husband would move into a studio in the hopes of stretching his single salary.
“My mom is too old to provide childcare,” Gruesen said. “And so if it’s a matter of paying for childcare in an area that’s expensive or not having a job, well then I’m probably going to be exiting the workforce at least temporarily.”
When the contractor who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs talked to BI, she was a week into the job hunt. With her husband planning to retire soon and paying for professional training, she was already starting to pull on her professional connections to try to find a job quickly.
“You’re constantly starting over,” she said of military spouses. “That’s where I am right now. I’m trying right now. I don’t really have anything that seems to be moving forward at the time.”
Military recruitment and retention could be impacted
In its 2023 annual report, Blue Star Families found that military spouse employment ranked as the top issue for active-duty spouses and a top-five issue for active-duty service members.
Gruesen said that spousal employment has posed recruitment challenges for years and that the Trump administration’s recent actions have only made them worse. Without a two-income household, she said, it’s much harder to have a family, making recruitment less and less attractive to young Americans.
“When you have an all-volunteer force, somebody’s not going to set aside having a family for 20 years,” she told BI. “And if you’re female, you can’t, like you cannot serve from 25 to 45, or even 20 to 40 and still have a family. It is biologically unlikely — not impossible, but it’s unrealistic.”
The DoD employee said she could see DOGE’s recent efforts to slash the federal workforce impacting recruitment, mainly for those who are already married. But more than that, she sees it impacting re-enlistment numbers — her own husband has talked about leaving the Marines if things don’t change.
The contractor also foresees challenges for retention, saying that there might be people who leave “because of the detrimental effect that it’s having on military families.”
For now, Ramsey is still in Germany, living in military base housing and paying relatively few bills. She feels guilty sometimes for complaining about her situation because she knows other military families have it way worse. But if her husband is pulled out of Germany and there aren’t any federal jobs for her back home?
“We’d just be screwed.”
Madison Hoff contributed to reporting.
