As Republicans wield their Washington trifecta, and Elon Musk goes after the most liberal programs in the federal workforce, many Democrats are suddenly finding themselves in an uncomfortable position: unemployed.
And those Democrats are increasingly turning to one place for their next job: Capitol Hill.
At least, they hope Capitol Hill will be their next job. With the competition fierce for a spot, most of these Democrats are getting turned away.
“If you’re the new dude who’s like, ‘I want to be an LC,’” a staffer to a freshman Senate Democrat told NOTUS, referring to the entry-level job of legislative correspondent, “OK. Good luck!”
This staffer told NOTUS that their office had received “hundreds” of applications for just a few open positions.
But it’s not just one Senate office flooded with applications. Multiple Democratic aides around Capitol Hill told NOTUS they are digging their way out from under a mountain of top-tier resumes.
“It’s not just the quantity of resumes we’ve seen, but the quality,” a senior staffer in a different Democratic Senate office told NOTUS. “You’re not just going up against dozens or hundreds of people, but people with White House and extensive Hill experience.”
“It means if you want to land on the Hill in a Democratic office, you need to hustle harder and be a little more patient than in previous years,” this staffer continued.
There are a few logistical reasons Democrats seem to be feeling the influx of resumes acutely. For one, Democrats went from controlling the White House and the Senate in 2024 to being shut out from power in 2025. There are, mathematically, also fewer Democrats in need of staff on Capitol Hill and more Democratic staffers — like alums of Joe Biden’s White House — looking for work in Washington.
Plus, in the Senate, where offices take on a staff of about 20 to 25 people, five of the six freshmen came from the House, bringing with them seasoned congressional aides and campaign officials. Meanwhile, three veteran members — Sens. Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey — lost their reelection bids, leaving their staffs to look for new opportunities.
Of course, that was all true before Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sank its teeth into the federal bureaucracy. In the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area alone, 13,000 federal workers and contractors applied for unemployment benefits by March. Job applications from people working at agencies targeted by DOGE are up 75% compared to 2022, according to Indeed.
Now, Democratic staffers looking for work on the Hill recently told Roll Call that they are “disheartened” and that the jobs have become “horribly competitive.” Those who have landed new roles working for Congress — where pay is comparatively low and the hours are relatively low — suddenly consider themselves “lucky.”
One of those “lucky” staffers who recently got a job working for a House Democrat said they applied for “every job opening that there was” to land on Capitol Hill.
It got to the point, they said, “even getting a confirmation that you applied, that they received your application, but aren’t moving forward, was kind of a nice change of what we normally get.”
“At least you know that your email isn’t broken, that it’s going somewhere,” this staffer said.
As one Senate Democratic communications staffer told NOTUS, “It’s brutal out here.”
This staffer said they were aware of multiple entry-level and mid-level Hill communications jobs that had attracted over a thousand applications after initial screenings.
The situation, this aide told NOTUS, coupled with fewer opportunities in Democratic outside groups compared to the first Trump administration, “forces many, many talented people to go months unemployed or leave politics entirely, which isn’t the pipeline we need to be encouraging at this moment in history.”
That’s a challenge for the many unemployed Democrats looking for work — being an outsider as their party endeavors to mount a resistance to a Trump administration and Republican majorities that swept them out of work.
“Not having money, that’s difficult,” an unemployed, former Kamala Harris staffer told NOTUS. “But I think the most difficult part is being on the sidelines when you want to be actively involved and engaged.”
This staffer worked on Capitol Hill before working for the Harris campaign. They’ve been unemployed since the campaign laid them off after the election.
“It really is the fight of our lives, and it requires an equal and more intense pushback,” they said. “And as someone who works in this work and is driven by that, it’s difficult, wanting to do that, but not having the opportunity to do so.”
Since they were laid off, this former staffer has applied to 70 jobs, 25 of which were on Capitol Hill. They detailed hours of applications, writing tests, interviews and final round anticipation just to be told the office is going in “another direction.”
“It’s like honestly having all these fish in the aquarium trying to swim in like a koi pond,” the former Harris staffer told NOTUS.
The mission-driven instinct that the Harris staffer described is something Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at Partnership for Public Service, has observed as she tries to assist newly unemployed federal workers.
“A lot of these feds have spent careers in public service, and so for them, finding jobs and finding mission in the next thing they do is really important,” she told NOTUS.
Partnership for Public Service is a longstanding nonpartisan organization focused on improving the federal workforce via recruitment, leadership training and public trust. These days, they’re also helping prepare fired federal workers for new roles.
Asked about the job landscape now, Mattingley said challenge is “the right word for it because so many people are looking at one time.”
She acknowledged there is a particularly competitive job landscape on Capitol Hill and noted an uptick in former federal workers considering state and local government roles because, she said, “they really do want to continue their public service.”
But, in Congress, the consensus among Democratic staffers is that continuing service is easier said than done.
“Put it this way, this is not the time to be moving D.C. if you’re new to the game,” the first Senate Democratic staffer said.
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.