- The National Institutes of Health fired about 1,200 workers as part of what President Donald Trump claimed was a cost-cutting effort. Employees who spoke with Fortune said that for fired public-health workers, there are few private-sector options. The work of many scientists is hyper-specific to their labs and can’t be readily applied elsewhere. Others say casting a wider net in a job search would mean applying to positions for which they are overqualified.
As the government purges employees, some federal workers in public health fear they won’t have better luck in the private sector.
Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, about 30,000 federal employees have been fired as part of what the president argues is a mass cost-cutting effort, Axios reported. Of those employees, about 2,900 were from the Department of Health and Human Resources, according to Inside Health Policy, citing a call with House committees and staffers. About 1,200 are from the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, overseeing nearly $48 billion in research. The NIH has also announced billions of dollars in cuts to biomedical research, saying on social media that slashing funding for “indirect” research costs would save it $4 billion annually.
Fired NIH workers, many of whom have a doctoral degree and years of training in specialized fields, are either caught in an appeals process purgatory—petitioning to government watchdogs about the legality of their firings—or are confronted with the weight of the federal hiring freeze. Looking to the private sector for options, some workers aren’t convinced there’s a future there, either.
“I spent 20 years getting this job, and now I'm going to have to figure out how to do something else,” one fired NIH biologist, who wished to remain anonymous as she tries to get her position reinstated, told Fortune.
The NIH did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
"This job doesn't exist in the private sector"
U.S. private employers added 77,000 jobs in February, according to ADP, the smallest gain since July of last year and nearly half of the 148,000 jobs expected last month.
As private-sector job opportunities take a hit, NIH workers aren’t convinced they’d find a job there anyway. NIH labs are often bespoke to their founding principal investigator (PI), meaning there are not one-to-one equivalent positions in the public and private sectors, according to one anonymous NIH employee, working in a lab developing brain-computer interfaces. The employee’s identity is known to Fortune.
“This job doesn't exist in the private sector,” she told Fortune.
Government-funded research is instrumental to the development of corporate technologies: The NIH funded and is assessing the efficacy of Apple Watch’s ability to detect atrial fibrillation, a stroke warning sign, for example. However, the employee argued the private sector doesn’t have the same appetite for the slow-moving pace of publicly funded research.
“The lab does not create a product,” the employee said. “The lab creates an idea that can be transferred into a product in 20 years. No VC is gonna fund that. We don't have output in that way, but we create something that the private industry should be happy to have.”
Overqualified for available jobs
The NIH biologist, who was fired and worked for the agency since 2019, said casting a wider net in her job search to look at openings at universities would mean applying to jobs she was either overqualified for or didn’t have expertise in because she spent years pursuing adjacent research.
“They're not going to hire me as an associate scientist because that's for people with maybe a master's degree or something,” she said. “But they're not going to hire me as a director, which is what my level of experience would lead to, because I don't know how the field works.”
Beyond trying alternative ways to get a paycheck, workers fear the impact of the purges on the future of research. Rehiring for labs can take years, the biologist said. She worked with young graduate students or fellows who, beyond losing out on contract renewal, could become jaded with the idea of working in public institutions.
The few new or appealing opportunities in government public health endangers the future of scientific research, according to Nate Brought, former director of the NIH’s Office of the Executive Secretariat, who resigned last month because he disagreed with the agency’s direction. The consequences of the firings are already apparent, but prolonged staff shortages and lab disruptions could have decades of repercussions.
“The NIH does not make advancements in biomedical research for Republicans or for Democrats or for Americans,” Brought said. “The entire world benefits from what we do.”
“We are risking an entire generation of medical professionals, researchers, and scientists for petty political bulls--t,” he added. “And it's a future disaster waiting to happen.”
If you're a federal worker with a tip, or if you'd like to share your experience, please contact Sasha Rogelberg on Signal @sashrogel.13.
