Fired Education Department worker: 'We got the sense that we were disposable.'
Joe Murphy, whose position as a management and data analyst was eliminated when the Department of Education laid off nearly 50% of its workforce Tuesday evening, said on Wednesday that he and his colleagues are filled with a sense of "sadness" and "disbelief."
"We got the sense that we were disposable in a certain sense, especially those of us in the data space," he told ABC News.
According to Murphy, everyone he worked with directly had their positions terminated.
The 56-year-old from Dumfries, Virginia, said he has spent almost 20 years in education data, previously working for the National Center for Education Statistics, in addition to serving as a contractor for a formula grant data collection space in the Education Department.
In the Department of Government Efficiency's latest efforts to cut federal costs, some 1,315 Education Department employees were affected by the "reduction in force" notices, leaving 2,183, according to senior officials at the agency.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the job cuts on Wednesday, referring to them as "a promise made and a promise kept."
"There is no reason that we should be spending more than most developed countries in the world. And our education system is failing," she added. "The president wants to return education back to the states, empower those closest to the people to make these very important decisions for our children's lives. And this is a first step in that process."
Though Murphy said the terminations were expected, he said the experience has still been disconcerting.
"Nothing surprises me anymore, but it's still kind of shocking and impactful," he said.
"I do not know where I go forward from here ... I am suddenly belched out into a job market that has been at the very same time, severely constricted and also completely flooded with people who have a similar skill set to mine. I'm 56 years old," Murphy continued, adding that he has spend "more than a third of [his] entire life" in this line of work.
"Felt really weird to wake up this morning and be like, wow, what am I gonna do?" he said.
Murphy emphasized how the most important and rewarding aspect of his job, which falls under the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, was serving the nation's children.
"It's really for the kids, and what we do is for the kids. And so many of us feel that way," he said, adding that he "wish[es] things went differently."
"That's the thing I have the greatest sense of pride in. I would think, you know, doing a good job and getting the data to the programs in the right timely fashion -- good, accurate data, so that they can make decisions on behalf of, you know, 100,000 schools in this country and 18,000 districts and 50-something state education agencies," he explained.
When asked if he believes children will continue to receive needed educational benefits and services, Murphy projected a bleak outlook and expressed his belief that "we're politicizing the department of education and the education of our students."
He also expressed concern over whether his work will even be able to continue.
"So, all that work that we did for the programs, I don't know who's going to do it now or be able to do it. The folks in the programs were already overwhelmed. They were so grateful to us for the work that we did for them in distilling down this massive amount of data to a few answers with groundwork that they laid together with us," he said. "So, I don't know where that's going to get done."
Murphy is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which he says he joined only recently due to the change in administrations from Biden to Trump.
"When it seemed to be going south and everybody was taking over after the inauguration, I said, okay, well, I'm gonna go ahead and sign up," he said, explaining how he was affected by the "last two months of being led by threats and intimidation."
"I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that the federal government needed some improvements and some restructuring to some degree," Murphy acknowledged. "But how you do it really matters, and you can't just ... the federal government is not a private business, and you can't run it that way."
