At least 7,000 federal workers filed for unemployment benefits since shutdown began

More than 7,200 federal workers filed initial unemployment claims last week, according to data posted on an obscure Labor Department website.

The site shows that 7,224 federal workers filed claims with the Federal Employee Unemployment Compensation program for the week ending October 11.

The figures, first reported by Bloomberg News, are published a week late.

According to the program fact sheet, “The UCFE program provides unemployment compensation to federal employees who have lost their job through no fault of their own. »

The timing of the increase in claims coincides with the first full week of a government shutdown and the Trump administration’s announcement of layoffs at many government agencies.

Data shows there were around 3,300 claims the week before, when the shutdown began. For the week ending September 26, there were approximately 600 claims.

White House budget director Russ Vought told the “Charlie Kirk Show” this week that more than 10,000 employees could see their jobs eliminated in “workforce reduction” actions.

Trump told reporters last week that there “would be a lot” of job cuts “and it would be biased toward the Democrats because we thought, you know, they started this thing.”

A federal judge in California issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday barring further layoffs.

U.S. District Judge Susan Yvonne Illston said the manner in which the firings were carried out was “contrary to the laws.”

The judge said the administration had “taken advantage of the failure of public spending and the functioning of government to assume that all bets were off, that the laws no longer applied to them, and that they could impose whatever structures they wanted on a government situation they did not like.”

In his ruling, Illston noted that some employees might not even know they were laid off because “RIF notices were sent to government email accounts, and furloughed employees cannot access their work email during a shutdown.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that the president “has the ability and legal authority to fire people from the federal government” and that Illston, Bill Clinton’s nominee, “is another far-left partisan judge.”

“We are 100 percent confident that we will win based on merit,” Leavitt said.