NY Times Super Concerned Over All Those USAID Employees Still Out Of Work

This might play well with the hardcore Dem base, but, not with average Americans

A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss

She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk and left with three days of health insurance and no severance pay. She had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development or related groups for more than two decades. She made $175,000 a year.

That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps, Medicaid and a supplemental nutrition program for women and children that helps with their now 19-month-old daughter.

Does anyone think it, I don’t know, a massive conflict of interest that her husband’s NGO was getting gobs of money from the wife’s government agency? Did they consider saving money? Maybe it’s time to audit them to see where the money to the NGO was going

When the Trump administration dismantled the sprawling global aid agency last year, it wiped out virtually an entire industry — international development — that had been based in Washington since U.S.A.I.D.’s creation in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy. Nearly all of the agency’s 16,000 employees were laid off. An estimated 280,000 contractors, partners and local hires worldwide lost their jobs as well.

A year later, people have plowed through savings, cashed out retirement funds and moved in with friends and relatives. Former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have done informal surveys estimate that less than half have found full-time work, with many making less than before. An estimated third are unemployed. Others are in part-time work. The District of Columbia currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 6.7 percent, in large part because of major reductions in the federal work force, including U.S.A.I.D., and cuts to government grants and contracts.

It’s almost like they really have few work skills that have value in the real world.

Jobs are also gone at the many nonprofits and partner agencies once funded by U.S.A.I.D. “Everyone I know is also up the creek, all my bosses, my mentors, the people you would normally go to, the people providing me references,” said Catherine Baker, 36, who, as a contractor, made $127,000 a year recruiting staff and helping to start up U.S.A.I.D. projects. Ms. Baker now volunteers as a manager for OneAid, which helps former U.S.A.I.D. workers, and works nine hours a week as a companion for two elderly women.

I feel zero sympathy for these people who pretty much made a boatload of money off the taxpayers for very little in return. Remember how Marco Rubio said that only about 20% of the aid was making it to recipients? Here are some things as noticed by Robert Sterling from the article

EVERY person in this story was making well into six figures:

USAID employee: $175,000
USAID contractor: $127,000
USAID-funded NGO employee: $272,000(!)
USAID advisor at the DOD: $195,000
USAID contractor: $200,000

There were 16,000 employees at USAID, and the New York Times was only able to interview one making less than $175k. Worldwide, there were an estimated 280,000 contractors.

Oh, and the NY Times notes

Others acknowledged that there was bloat and waste in the agency and a need for reform. Much of the $35 billion it managed in 2024 went to Washington-based contractors, not directly to people in need overseas. The success of many projects was hard to measure.

But all of those interviewed said they were still incredulous that an agency that amounted to less than 1 percent of the federal budget had been so quickly obliterated and reduced to a skeletal operation within the State Department. U.S.A.I.D. workers who once thought of themselves as ambassadors for American “soft power” said they worried about the trust in the United States that was lost overseas. They said they were still burning from President Trump’s characterization of them as “radical-left lunatics.”

You know how it could have stayed in business? By not being 80% graft and waste, full of Do Gooders who were enriching themselves, friends, and family. They dug their own pink slips.