Kerene Tayloe is still unemployed a year after leaving what she thought was her dream job in the federal government.
The 45-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based lawyer is navigating a tight job market, competing against the 271,825 other federal sector employees who have also been pushed out or fired during President Donald Trump’s second term. At the same time, the Trump administration’s opposition to environmental justice efforts, her area of expertise, has halted federal funding to private entities while making donors more reluctant to fund such initiatives, drying up an already limited pool of jobs. “If you don’t have the connections with someone at an organization to have them flag your application you’re not going to move very far,” she said.
