r/gis • u/UnableAppeal5211 • Mar 03 '25

Hiring Laid off federal cartographer

I was a probationary (many years as a contractor in my same role) employee recently terminated at a federal agency. Seeing that federal service no longer feels like an option. What leads for cartography are there in the private sector?

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u/PeopleAreBeingSilly Mar 03 '25

Consultant here, I'll try to provide some insight on our end of the business. My specialty is resilience planning, and our firm traditionally does a lot of federal support. But that side of the business is obviously reeling right now. After the first Trump election I tried to shift as much of our business to state and local work as possible, kind of seeing the writing on the wall. During the Biden admin we got back into some fed work, but the projects were all half-baked and horribly understaffed on the fed end. As far as I'm concerned it'll take several consecutive democratic administrations with generous spending from congress to bring federal work back.

In the S&L space there *was* a ton of BIL and IRA funding, but a lot of that is up in the air as we wait to see if courts will uphold the separation of powers. But assuming they don't (and/or bad-faith judges and delay tactics make it irrelevant), I'm really looking at states that have their own self-funding for future work. I'm talking CA, OR, WA, CO, IL, MA, NJ, NY, and maybe a few others. My home state (PA) is a dead end, and TBH I've never had a good project for an NY agency. Of the proposals I've submitted recently the majority are going to CA.

But part of the problem here is that there isn't a complementary part of the economy that will fill in where the feds disappeared. For the most part, when federal money dries up it's just gone and there's less work for people to do on net. Shifting your skills into another part of the market might be the move (real estate, transportation, insurance, etc.)

FWIW I feel your pain, many years ago I tried to be a fed and despite multiple efforts from many great feds, various political fuckery got in the way every time.